Hesychasm as a historical and cultural phenomenon. Hesychasm and church art. Meeting ancient tradition with modern thinking

Issues of Culturology and Philosophy

HESYCHASM IN EASTERN SLAVIC CULTURE

M. N. Gromov

The work was supported by the Russian Humanitarian Foundation, grant No. 08-03-00238a

Hesychasm began to penetrate Rus' under the Russified Greek Metropolitan Theognost (1328-1353). The beneficent spiritual impulse received from Byzantium and being one of its last gifts, fertilized the national culture of the XIV-XV centuries. and contributed to its unsurpassed flourishing. It was then that Corpus areopagiticum, Philip Monotrop's Dioptra, John of Damascus's The Source of Knowledge, and a number of other fundamental creations of theological and philosophical thought spread. It was then that Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev, Epiphany the Wise, Metropolitan Cyprian, Pakhomiy Logofet created, personifying, on the one hand, the high rise of ancient Russian culture and, on the other, its inextricable connection with the Greek-Slavic Orthodox area, which, according to D Obolensky, a kind of commonwealth (Commonwealth)2 or, in the words of R. Picchio, with a special region of Slavia orthodoxa, which was under the strong intellectual emanation of Byzantium3.

Hesychasm is characterized not by a departure from reality, as its critics sometimes believe, but by the solution of the actual meaningful problems of the era “from the point of view of eternity”4, when not the changeable empiricism of this world, but unshakable values ​​play the main orienting role. The main intention of hesychasm, which determines its essence, is the organic conjugation of a phenomenally experienced reality with a new understanding, a new reading, new interpretation patristic heritage that preserves the incorruptible noumenal essence.

Speaking more broadly, regarding the typology of the emergence of new cultural phenomena, then, as a rule, an energetic breakthrough involves, for balance, the search for a reliable support in past experience, and the forms of interaction with it can be very different (from apologetics to polemics), but this is always an opening potential possibilities of the "dialogical situation" within the framework of a single cultural ecumene, the all-encompassing space of the "seven-sphere" (Yu. Lotman)5.

The main pathos of hesychasm lies in the new axiological setting of the late Middle Ages, when in the confrontation with the Renaissance and at the same time under the influence of proto-Renaissance and Renaissance ideas proper, a kind of rehabilitation of the created, material, carnal principle takes place through enlightenment, spiritualization, exaltation of it by the Tabor light of Divine energy. If for the early Christian authors, as well as for the neophyte educators of the peoples who consistently received baptism, a severe anti-Paganist sermon with a sharp rejection of any

the cult of the flesh, then after several centuries of the assertion of the Christian primacy of the spirit, it became necessary to correct the previous position.

The human body begins to be perceived not as a dungeon of the soul and an obstacle to its salvation, but as a bright chamber, a beautiful abode, a true temple of the soul, which needs to be cleansed of impurities of passions and bad thoughts, filled with the Holy Spirit, under the influence of which the bodily and spiritual principles will be harmonized. The long-standing dream of a harmonious personality, expressed, in particular, by Plato in the Phaedrus dialogue, where the soul is represented as a rushing chariot driven by a charioteer - the mind that restrains the horse of passion and the horse of will6, is realized in the practice of hesychasm. This, in fact, is the aim of the refined meditation of the Palamists, and this is also served by the famous “Ustav” of the Monk Nil of Sora, the goal of whose monastic aspirations is “not the mortification of the flesh, but internal, moral self-improvement”7, but, of course, not in the utilitarian-secular , but an elevated spiritual understanding of the ascent from the earthly to the heavenly. The largest Russian hesychast creatively applied the teachings of St. John of the Ladder k^tca^, where 6 stages of the formation of affects are considered (la^l - struggle is omitted)8.

In relation to monastic practice, Neil Sorsky, referring to Hesychius of Jerusalem, points out four oppositions to passions:

1. “Pretexts to observe” (cutting off early impressions, “newly introduced into the heart and announced to the mind”, at the very initial stage).

2. “Have a deeper heart, be silent from every thought and pray” (internal concentration of the spirit, which does not allow external influence and remains in prayerful concentration).

3. “Invoke the Lord Jesus Christ for help” (repetition of protective prayers, especially Jesus).

4. “Memory to have a mortal” (reflection on the transience of earthly existence and eternity beyond its threshold)9. Let us note that it was precisely on such traditions of patristic and ancient Russian thought that the cardiognosia of Pamfil Yurkevich and the anthropological teaching of Bishop Luka Voyno-Yasenetsky, echoing it in our time, as well as, to a certain extent, the work of Grigory Skovoroda and, undoubtedly, the “Philokalia” of Paisiy Velichkovsky, were later formed.

In accordance with the practice of hesychasts, Neil gives, as they would say now, psychotherapeutic advice: “hold your breath”, “be silent”, “sigh”, from a distracted stay in the world, move on to the utmost concentration of consciousness and inner self-deepening. Ascetic recommendations, traditional for Orthodoxy, also contribute to this: “if someone has a healthy body, it is fitting to tire him with fasting and vigils and making it difficult, if bowing or needlework is difficult to do”, because idleness and satiety are the source of many vices10. In the fifth chapter, the monk examines the teaching of St. Nile of Sinai about eight vices generated by bad passions: gluttony, fornication, love of money, anger, sadness, despondency, vanity, pride. Eight vicious passions should be opposed by eight virtues: fasting, chastity, non-acquisitiveness, mercy, faith, patience, modesty, humility. Composition "About

eight thoughts ”Sinait was very popular in Rus', it is found in many moral and ascetic collections. The fifth chapter of the Russian palamist itself is close to the creation of De coenobiorum institutis by John Cassian the Roman, the founder of monasticism in Gaul in the 4th-5th centuries, who was also concerned about issues of ascetic life.

The idea of ​​a synergistic transformation of the created world appears not only in verbal sources, but also in icon painting, small plastic art, architecture - in the entire context of culture. In the icon "Transfiguration" by Andrei Rublev from the iconostasis of the Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, the traditional plot is filled with new content. The figures of the apostles located at the bottom of the composition appear self-absorbed, concentrated, “contemplating the light within themselves”; the Tabor radiance coming from Christ permeates the whole picture, instead of a sharp contrast of spirit and matter, an enlightened image of light, spiritualized, airy flesh, the harmony of heaven and earth appears11.

The life-affirming mood of Rublev is continued in the work of his followers, it reaches a particularly major sound in Dionysius, who created magnificent frescoes in the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin of the Ferapontov Monastery in the Vologda Territory12. In the north of Rus', where in the desert silence of the midnight nature the soul is more open to the outstretched heavens, many monasteries are founded in the name of the Transfiguration of the Lord: on Valaam, on Solovki, on Lake Kubenskoye.

Note that such an optimistic vision of the world must be correlated with the contrasting background of harsh historical realities and the difficult ideological situation of the past centuries. In the second half of the XV century. throughout Europe, eschatological sentiments of expectation of the end of the world were growing, for, according to the biblical chronology, the last seventh thousand years in 1492 expired. In the 16th century. after the controversy between the nonpossessors, supporters of the Monk Nil of Sorsk, and the Josephites, followers of the Monk Joseph Volotsky, the state-centralization direction prevailed, the doctrine of "Moscow - the Third Rome" was formed, which carried the idea of ​​building a strong earthly kingdom in the spirit of the pan-European concept of Roma aeterna13. This doctrine did not coincide in a number of parameters with the established ideal of Holy Rus', which led to dramatic conflicts in Russian history from the Middle Ages to the present day14.

One should not, however, oppose the non-acquisitive and Josephite traditions, which was the sin of liberal pre-revolutionary and especially Soviet historiography, which everywhere sought the intransigence of the class struggle. Both monastic currents developed different aspects of the heritage of St. Sergius of Radonezh, in which the clever work of the Hesychasts and the active social functioning of the monasteries were worthily combined. The country needed both small sketes and flourishing vast monasteries, just as it needed secluded hermits, even to the point of seclusion, and shepherds of the Church who were energetically active in the world.

Hesychasm and the line of the Monk Nil of Sora found their continuation in the Russian eldership, the activities of Tikhon of Zadonsk, Theophan the Recluse and many other holy ascetics, of which special mention should be made of the Monk Seraphim of Sarov, who performed a hermit feat in the name of salvation

Russia from impending troubles and upheavals. Now, in the conditions of the spiritual revival of the Fatherland, interest and the need for deep sources are awakening again; quests of the neo-patristic, neo-hesychast, neo-oldist kind are revived. It is indicative that neo-Russian icon painting, which has almost perished, but is now widely developing, takes as examples the best creations of the high Russian Middle Ages of the 11th-15th centuries, thus following the hesychast tradition immanently embedded in them.

The interest shown in Old Russian Palamism is not accidental, because it became not just one of the most influential spiritual movements, but essentially coincided with the national mentality in its innermost foundations and effectively contributed to its creative upsurge. However, the study of hesychasm is associated with a number of serious methodological issues, including the problem of the diversity of surviving evidence and the need for their holistic, interconnected, synchronized interpretation.

The available sources can be conditionally divided into verbal (lives, letters, messages, chronicles), non-verbal (works of art and architecture), combined (illuminated manuscripts, icons and frescoes with texts, singing art); they need not only their isolated consideration from the standpoint of historical, philological, art criticism, theological, philosophical and other sciences, but also a qualitatively new interpretation with the help of the latest methods of complex source study, integration synthesis of analytically obtained components, an all-encompassing semiotic approach, when as meaningful signs-symbols, all elements of culture without exception are studied.

Similar attempts are being made in a number of areas of modern semiotics, for example, iconology15, one of the prominent representatives of which E. Panofsky put forward the thesis of “condensation in a separate work”, taken as a microcosm of the entire macrocosm of the culture that gave rise to it, and proposed an original idea of ​​architectural Gothic as “Stone scholasticism”, which was not an outwardly spectacular beautiful phrase, but a thoughtful statement about the unity of incarnations in the diversity of cultural monuments of the essence of the medieval worldview16.

In the course of semiotic research in the West, many books have been published on the semantics of architecture17. There are several publications on this and related topics in Russian literature18. The idea expressed by Saussure about the closeness of architectural and natural languages ​​and the concept of a unified semantic analysis of cultural phenomena formulated by Levi-Strauss continue to be fruitful premises for modern research. According to E. Rogers, "architecture is the consolidation of time - an epoch in space", it "transforms the transient into the eternal"19. “The highest product of the human spirit” refers to the works of architecture by F. L. Wright: “In them live his innermost thoughts, here is his philosophy, true or false”20.

By organizing space by means of architecture, a person not only creates a utilitarian habitat (which, unfortunately, prevails in modern construction, especially mass construction), but embodies his vision of the world, his ideas about beauty, his dream of a harmonious existence. This is especially deeply realized in advanced civilizations. As a “model of the cosmos”, a human dwelling was understood in traditional Indian architecture21. Chinese architecture is just as philosophical. The house built under the sign "yang" was perceived as a world-organizing symbol, in the broad sense understood as a street, village, city, country, the entire celestial empire; it is opposed by the existing

under the sign "yin" unorganized space. And the ancient Slavs had their own rooted symbolic semantics of the house, walls, hearth, bed, doors and windows open to the world, which is still deeply seated in our minds23.

Arising one after another within the framework of different styles, far separated in time and space, the creations of architecture from different eras are unique evidence of the worldview and world-building of successive human generations. “The static, harmonious-plastic space of Ancient Greece, the mysterial, vertical-hierarchical space of the Middle Ages, the geometric-optical space of the Renaissance, the theatrical-dramatic space of the Baroque, the rationalized, dynamic space of modern architecture”24 clearly reflect those “aesthetic formations” (A. Flaker), which act as stages of the general development of mankind.

Acting as a "stone chronicle" architecture has a valuable feature, namely, the objectivity of the information contained in its creations. It reveals “pure, unfalsified trends of time”25, but taking into account the fact that the very process of reflecting the era is complex and ambiguous. If the monuments of writing can be removed to archives, books to libraries, works of art to museums, and all this can be hushed up or interpreted biasedly if desired, then the creations of architecture cannot be removed from the streets and squares, just as it is impossible to ultimately give them a misinterpretation, although , of course, they can be significantly damaged by demolition, distortion, biased assessments.

It should be emphasized the phenomenon of the synthesis of art, arising on the basis of architectural creativity. In this respect, architecture is close to philosophy, which holds together all forms of knowledge of the world, in its fundamental, interpretive function. At the same time, architecture has such a quality as inertia, because for its implementation, architectural ideas sometimes require quite a significant investment of time, money, and materials. In this regard, literature, especially journalism or poetry, can respond much more quickly to a changing situation.

In the U11-1X centuries. in Byzantium, instead of the original basilican churches, a more cross-domed type of church building was formed that met the needs of the cult. The cross-domed temple, in addition to a purely structural solution, has a deep ideological meaning. It expressed the

the concept of the universe, uniting under the sign of the cross the image of a quadrangular earthly firmament, likened to Noah's Ark, and a domed vault of heaven, as described by Kozma Indikoplova in "Christian Topography" following Clement of Alexandria26. At that time, an Orthodox church was increasingly perceived as a model of the universe expressed by plastic means, open to people, including them in itself through temple action. The temple as a world, the temple as a cosmos, the temple as a society has become an intermediate link between man - the "microcosm" and the universe - the "macrocosm". It was a fastening part of the ontological triad (“mesocosm”).

Not only the world, natural and social, but also human history was shown to the people entering the temple in the images of forefathers, biblical prophets, ancient thinkers, in the plots of mankind from the past to the future. From under the main dome, which, together with the dome space, was the center of the entire composition, the strict face of Pantokrator looked, on the eastern altar wall a mosaic or pictorial image of the sacrament of the Eucharist attracted attention, before leaving the temple, the eye stopped at an impressive fresco of the coming Last Judgment. The very cycle of daily, weekly and annual worship constantly reproduced the main paradigms of the Christian worldview. All his life, from a young receptive age to a wise old age, a person was imbued with a vision of the world through the image of the temple and the action taking place in it.

And invariably, before the gaze of a person standing in the temple, the iconostasis appeared, which developed in ancient Russian art from a small altar barrier in Byzantine churches to a majestic, reaching seven, nine, and even more tiered structures. The five-tier was considered classic. In it, from top to bottom, the ranks of the ancestral, prophetic, festive, deesis and local ranks lined up, consistently reproducing the philosophically meaningful world history in its Christian understanding. From the visually and spatially remote upper rows, as if through the haze of time, the faces of the forefathers and prophets appear. The most well-observed deesis row, raised above the crowd, expresses the central idea: a prayer to the Savior, seated in the form of a formidable judge of all human affairs and thoughts, on behalf of the Theotokos, John the Baptist, the archangels Michael, Gabriel and the most revered chosen saints. At the very bottom there is a local row, composed of icons closely connected with the temple itself, with the history of the city or village, with what is part of the life of the inhabitants of this area. "The whole human race" was represented here "in concretely recognizable images"28.

The antitheses of the world and the local, the universal and the personal, the mountainous and the earthly, the holy and the sinful, the inexorable and the merciful, made the soul tremble, break out of the narrowness of everyday consciousness, be imbued with eternity, think about the sublime and strive to the best of our ability for it. Being not only an icon painter, but also a thinker who expressed deep philosophical ideas in a spiritual and symbolic form, Andrei Rublev, who was considered “exceeding everyone in the wisdom of greenery,” well understood the dominant position of the iconostasis in

temple terrier and its strong impact on people's minds. He creatively developed the concept of this architectonic structure: “The iconostasis of the Assumption Cathedral created by Rublev in Vladimir concentrated the achievements of the philosophical and political thought of his time and opened new chapter in the history of the iconostasis"29.

K. Onash considers the iconostasis "drawn Summa theologiae of the Eastern Church

in and" . Its concept, history, inner content, expressed in a plastic form, attracts the attention of many specialists, including Western ones31. If the Latin genius in the person of St. Thomas Aquinas created a verbal-rational "sum", then the Orthodox in the person of St. Andrei Rublev and many other icon painters created a figurative and symbolic system, where the main values ​​and paradigms of the Christian dogma are visually embodied. The mystical theology of Eastern Christianity has found one of its deepest reflections in Russian icon painting32.

Among the reasons that influenced the formation of the high ancient Russian iconostasis, there is undoubtedly the influence of hesychasm. The flourishing of iconography, a long-standing love for wood as a plastic material that allows you to create pictorial compositions that rise vertically more easily than heavy marble, the desire to streamline the abundance of icons concentrated in the temple not mechanically, but in the form of a well-thought-out system, the general desire of the spirit for the heavenly led to the creation of a genuine a symphony of theological and philosophical doctrine embodied by means of religious art. Hesychasm gave a creative impetus, and the old local traditions of working with wood made it possible to create something new, unique, which was not in Byzantium.

It should be noted that the tendency to streamline the abundance and diversity of icons later led in the Old Believers to the arrangement, in addition to the central iconostasis, of additional ones on the side walls, although not in such a complete form. Also, in parallel, the process of systematization of fresco painting on the walls of the temple went on, and sometimes fresco, and in modern times - oil painting reproduced the rows of the iconostasis, as can be seen, for example, in the painting of the 17th century. Church of Elijah the Prophet in Yaroslavl

Not only in icon painting, called “speculation in colors” (E. N. Trubetskoy), but also in sewing, works of applied art, small plastic arts, high spirituality, deep content, and a gravitation towards the symbolic interpretation of life emerge. Many veils, shrouds, shrouds, airs, banners, created by Russian nuns and novices, are unique creations of sacred and aesthetic content. These are the “blue shroud” of the 15th century. from the collection of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, "The Savior Not Made by Hands with the Coming Ones" XIV century. from the Shchukin collection in the State Historical Museum, "The Eucharist with the Lives of Joachim, Anna and the Mother of God" of the 15th century. from the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin in Suzdal34.

One of the best collections of facial sewing is the collection of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Among several covers dedicated to the founding of the monastery, the earliest one (circa 1424), created shortly after the canonization of Sergius with the participation of his brother Fyodor, archimandrite of the Simonov Monastery, attracts attention35. This is the best image of the reverend, often reproduced in modern

graphic literature, which was influenced by the activities of Andrei Rublev. It is assumed that the signer, according to the drawing of which the embroidery was carried out by the monastery craftswomen, was from the circle of the famous icon painter.

Of the works of church applied art, which have a deep spiritual content, one can point to Zions and Jerusalem, which are images of the temple, tabernacle, city, merging into three-dimensional, visually perceived, generalized, sacralized models of the universe36. You can also give examples of beautiful creations and modest products of sphragistics (prints with nominal images), small plastic (wearable icons, crosses, panagias), stone and wood carving, casting, jewelry, etc. - and everywhere, upon careful study, traces are found worldviews, imprints of high spirituality, symbolically encrypted according to the canons of medieval semantics, key images of ancient Russian consciousness, artistically embodied philosophemes and theologemes37.

When interpreting the monuments of the past, the problem of the adequacy of the assessment also arises. Understanding their unconditional value as genuine sources and treating them as carefully as possible, one should not fetishize them and give them absolute significance. Any verbal and non-verbal source is a material, material, limited means of expression and transmission of the essential content inherent in it when creating, which is immaterial, immaterial, unlimited. The main thing is the ideal images and thoughts, behind which stands the highest spiritual creative principle, and not their material shell. That is why it is so important for a researcher to break through the frozen flesh of a monument, often fragmentary and distorted, to its true spiritual content, which is possible, in the words of ancient Russian scribes, only with “spiritual eyes”, and not “corporeal”38.

If the author of the monument tried to express the essence of the thoughts that owned him with the help of words, then a verbal means of embodiment was obtained, if using other methods, then a non-verbal one. For example, the universal idea of ​​the trinitarian nature of the universe, considered in Christianity as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, can be expressed in verbal form, in an icon, fresco, in a tripartite organization of the temple and temple action, by various plastic means, in color, in music, in language. gestures and symbols. At the same time, all the various forms, means and methods are equal in their applied function, for they are not the essence of the Trinity, but the essence of its reflection.

Let's take a closer look, for example, at the famous image of the Old Testament Trinity by Rublev, in which three thoughtful angels are having a silent conversation about the meaning of being. The composition of the lines creates an outline of the universe itself, the sphericity of which was substantiated by the ancient Greeks. The absence of ordinary details gives each detail the meaning of a deep symbol. The tree is not just an oak of mam-vri, under which the forefather Abraham treated the three wanderers who appeared to him, but the tree of life, the tree of knowledge, the tree of the cross. The building above the left angel is not only an architectural scene, the house of Abraham, but an understanding of the world as a well-organized city, standing firmly in the midst of the chaos of unorganized being. mountain above

the right angel is not just a landscape background, but a symbol of the ascent of the spirit to the heights of knowledge of the higher secrets of the universe. This image is no less philosophical than Hegel's triad or Kant's trichotomy. Without any words and categories, he expresses the trinitarian concept of being by visual means39. The desire for plastic, aesthetic, metaphorical self-expression is a distinctive feature of the national consciousness40.

The problem of the correlation of verbal and non-verbal aspects in this situation is of particular importance. The word woos;, Verbum has the unique function of a universal means of connecting, fixing, codifying and translating the entire culture. This is his strength. But it is impossible to express in a word the infinity of the universe, the deep essence of phenomena, the aroma of flowers, the melody of sounds, and much, much more that we existentially experience in the stream of life and the infinite diversity of created being, not to mention the attitude to the manifestations of the Divine, the highest form of communion with which is his silent contemplation.

Therefore, in hesychasm, the verbal incarnation is not the main one, and therefore the written sources are so limited and modest. How great is the activity of St. Sergius of Radonezh, how weakly verbalized it is. And is it possible to convey in words the inexpressible state of the soul, which, through refined meditation, begins to see clearly in the contemplation of the heavenly? It is also impossible, just as it is impossible to convey the full depth of the “metaphysics of light” of Palamism, which creatively developed an irrational and difficult to verbalize tradition coming from antiquity41.

Such a ratio of verbal and non-verbal is characteristic not only for Orthodox culture. With all the intellectual development of the West, with the mass of written works of Catholic and Protestant theologians, with the sophistication of conceptual tools, we still find a similar idea about the limits human mind and word boundaries. Thus, St. Bonaventure wrote in The Guide of the Soul to God (Itinerarium mentis in Deum), empathizing with St. Francis of Assisi, who climbed to the top of Mount Alverne and joined in the perfect contemplation of God: “Nature is powerless in this matter, not very many can help diligence, research gives little, but the anointing can give a lot: the tongue gives little, but inner joy gives a lot, the word and the book give little, but everything is a gift of God, that is, the Holy Spirit, creation gives little or nothing, but everything is creative ) essence, Father and Son and Holy Spirit”42.

The above arguments about the limitations of the verbal and the need to correlate it with the non-verbal are aimed not at belittling, but at a sober assessment of it. Like "Criticism pure mind»Kant does not at all testify to the obscurantism of the greatest thinker, but actually serves to enlighten the mind, so an objective approach to the word without blind worship should serve its good use, otherwise we risk falling into another creation of an idol, which occurs among intellectuals who fetishize the object your hobby. And the last amendment - it was about the human word as a universal means of culture, but not about the Divine Word, Logos, Christ as the eternal hypostasis of the Holy Trinity43.

I would like to complete the article with the words of the elders of Mount Athos: “The Highest Truth is honored by silence.”

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7 Arkhangelsky A. S. Nil Sorsky and Vassian Patrikeev. Their literary works and ideas in ancient Rus'. Part I. - St. Petersburg, 1882. - S. 129.

8 Maloney G. Russian Hesyhasm. The Spirituality of Nil Sorsky. - Paris, 1973; Saints Nil of Sorsk and Innokenty of Komel. Works / Ed. preparation G. M. Prokhorov. - St. Petersburg, 2008.

9 Borovkov-Maykov M. S. Nil Sorsky Tradition and Charter. - St. Petersburg, 1912. - S. 33.

10 Ibid. - S. 37.

11 Plugin V. A. Andrey Rublev's worldview. (Some problems). Old Russian painting as a historical source. - M., 1974. - S. 58-59.

12 Danilova E. I. Frescoes of the Ferapontov Monastery. - M., 1970.

13 Roma aeterna. - Leiden, 1972; Kudryavtsev MP Moscow - the third Rome. - M., 1994.

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29 Plugin V. A. Andrey Rublev's Worldview (Some Problems): Ancient Russian Painting as a Historical Source. - M., 1974. - S. 127.

30 Medieval Russian Culture / Ed. by H. Birnbaum and M. S. Flier. - Berkley, 1984. - P. 186.

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35 Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Artistic monuments. - M., 1968. - S. 119.

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37 Wagner G.K. From symbol to reality. The development of the plastic image in Russian art of the XIV - XV centuries. - M., 1980.

38 Gromov M. N. Medieval Natural Philosophy in Russia: Some Aspects // Miscellanea Mediae-valia. - bd. 21/1. - Berlin; New York, 1991. - P. 365.

39 Lazarev V. H. Russian medieval painting. - M., 1970.

40 Bychkov VV Russian medieval aesthetics of the XI-XVI centuries. - M., 1992; Spidlik T. L "idee Russe: une autre vision de l" homme. - Troyes, 1994.

41 Losev A. F. Essays ancient symbolism and mythology. - M., 1993. - S. 894-901.

42 Bonaventure. Soul guide to God. - M., 1993. - S. 155.

43 Mann W. Divine Simplicity // Philosophy of Religion: Almanac. - M., 2007. - S. 150-180.

The tradition of hesychasm, or sacred silence, recognized as the quintessence of the Orthodox religious type and style, created and accumulated a set of observations, approaches, and practices covering the most important aspects of nature and human activity. This is a kind of interdisciplinary knowledge about a person, which is reduced to a strict unity and integrity: it is everywhere subject to a single view of a person, a single concept of consciousness and a single task, which is to implement a certain anthropological strategy.

In typological, historical and cultural aspects, the phenomenon of Orthodox hesychasm is among the world traditions of spiritual practice, mystical or mystical-ascetic schools with a detailed canon and centuries-old history, such as yoga, Zen, Taoism, Sufism. All these traditions have long been the subject of close study and even mass interest, since their undoubted value has been discovered both for the sciences of man and, in a broader sense, for modern spiritual searches. In recent decades, a new reception of ancient traditions has developed, both in science and in mass consciousness; they have been integrated into today's spiritual, cultural and scientific context. Undoubtedly, this process had its negative sides, costs; it was far from complete without elements of reduction, vulgarization, market exploitation of ancient wisdom. And yet, in its essence, it should be recognized as necessary and fruitful. In the experience of ancient schools, modern man opens up new ways of understanding reality and new resources in his own nature.

No similar process took place with the hesychast tradition, but still partial signs, its individual elements are present, their number is growing, and in one form or another the process will probably be inevitable. But the situation here is very different. The discovery of Eastern traditions by the modern West meant their perception and assimilation in a culture that was previously alien and unfamiliar to them. In contrast, the appeal to the heritage of hesychasm in modern Russia means by no means the discovery of an exotic novelty, but the revival of an important component in the life of Orthodoxy, an active religion, organically connected with the entire fate of the country. Therefore, a new reception of the hesychasm tradition must begin with seeing and understanding the tradition in its true essence, religious and mystical, and in its true place, in the core of the Orthodox Church.

The Genesis of Russian Philosophical Thought

Domestic cultural layer in material and spiritually is more than a thousand years old, and what happens every time on its surface can be fundamentally explained not only by analyzing the action of momentary factors, but also by all means taking into account all previous development.

To understand the essence of the Russian state and imperial consciousness, it is necessary to trace its genesis and evolution from its origins to the present. In the XI century. Metropolitan Hilarion, in his “Sermon on Law and Grace”, glorifying the Baptist of Rus', the Great Kiev Prince Vladimir, compares him with the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who established Christianity as the official ideology and founded Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Vladimir is glorified both as an educator equal to the apostles and as a great ruler who conquered many tribes. So even in the pre-Mongolian period, the foundations of the political self-consciousness of Rus' were laid as a great state, consecrated by the church and confident in its power among other powers.

After the Mongol invasion and the ruin of Kyiv, the role of the center of East Slavic statehood gradually passes to Moscow. The gradually maturing idea of ​​a special mission for the new capital of Rus' led to the appearance at the beginning of the 16th century. doctrine "Moscow - the Third Rome", according to which two Romes fell, Moscow - the third, and the fourth - not to be.

The substantiation of this doctrine went in different directions, up to the composition of legendary genealogies. Ivan the Terrible considered himself a descendant of the Roman emperor Augustus, he was the first to be married as a king (the abbreviated name of the title "Caesar") according to a special rank compiled by Metropolitan Macarius. The residence of the rulers of Russia - the Moscow Kremlin, consciously and purposefully with the help of Italian architects, was by that time turned into a majestic sovereign ensemble, standing on one of the seven hills, like the Roman Capitol.

When the new northern capital of the Russian state was founded, it was conceived as the city of St. Peter, competing with the Roman throne, the residence of the pope, whose universal power mystically continues the omnipotence of the Roman emperors, who were not only supreme rulers, but also supreme pontiffs. This Caesar-Papist combination of state and sacred power then passed to Byzantium and Russia. Peter I, having abolished the patriarchate, made the church an appendage of the state machine, thereby strengthening the empire, but weakening the authority of the church.

In the 19th century The Russian Empire reached the maximum of territorial annexations, including Poland, Finland, Alaska. As one of the Western historians wittily put it, it grew out of a small Moscow principality, which, for several centuries, waging exceptionally just wars only for its independence, conquered 1/6 of the world's land.

The expansion of Russia to the East was part of a pan-European expansion that spread throughout the world. In some respects, the exploration of the Wild West in North America resembles the exploration of the Wild East in Eurasia; therefore, in the politics, traditions, mentality of Americans and Russians, elements of similarity can be caught. However, unlike the United States, our country developed as an imperial state. One of his hidden desires was the idea of ​​establishing himself on the Bosphorus and creating some kind of Byzantine state under the protectorate of the Russian tsars. Even the leader of the Cadets P. Milyukov dreamed of hoisting Orthodox cross to the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople.

On the ruins of the tsarist empire, a new super-empire arose - the USSR, on the coat of arms of which the entire globe was depicted under the shadow of a star, hammer and sickle. Moscow, according to N. Berdyaev, continuing the tradition of the Third Rome, has become the capital of the Third International, as an effective tool in achieving world domination through inspiring world revolution. Russia has become the main subject and the main victim of this satanic plan. The moderate claims of old Russia were replaced by the exorbitant hegemonic aspirations of a new political colossus, which subsequently could not bear its own weight.

The entire thousand-year history of our country is permeated by the confrontation and at the same time a bizarre interweaving of two fundamental ideals - the political, embodied in the concept of "Moscow - the Third Rome", and the sacred, reflected in the image of Holy Rus'. The cruelty of political institutions, barbaric customs, contempt for the value of an individual human life, lack of rights - on one pole and refined spiritual culture, magnificent works of architecture, painting, music, literature, plastic arts, mercy, compassion for the humiliated and offended - on the other.

This duality, the ambivalence of reality, was deeply felt by many Russian people, starting with the medieval thinker Daniil Zatochnik, who complained about his poverty, and Archpriest Avvakum, who was burned alive, to the countless host of Russian new martyrs of the 20th century. Observant foreigners Herberstein, Contarini, Chancellor were struck by the contrasts they saw in Rus'. A similar leitmotif emerges in the book of one of the authoritative representatives of Western Russians, James Billington, “The Icon and the Axe”.

However, harsh, contrasting, unfavorable conditions for a comfortable life tempered people, educating (which was also noted by external observers) staunch warriors, patient citizens, super-hardy inhabitants of a vast empire, in the vastness of which entire nations could be lost. Not a mild coastal, but a sharp continental climate (both in the natural and social sense) developed an appropriate stereotype of behavior. For a long time in Russia, circumstances have contributed to the emergence of philosophers not of an armchair type, calmly and measuredly pondering the problems of being and consciousness in a cozy library, but ascetics, martyrs, confessors of an idea, who sacrificed not only comfort and career for the sake of truth, but often freedom and even life, what the monastic imprisonment of Maxim Grek, the exile of Radishchev and Herzen, the stay in hard labor of Dostoevsky, the death in Stalin's camps of Florensky and Shpet remind us of. The severe trials of the soul and the flesh gave the spirit a deeply suffered existential experience, unattainable in a comfortable environment. On the edge of the abyss, on the verge of life and death, in the face of eternity, completely different thoughts come up than at the desk.

Rus' in geopolitical terms has long been a barrier, foreground, buffer zone of Europe in the eastern direction, like Spain in the south, so such distant and different countries have something in common in history, politics, and traditions. The development of Russian culture took place in different, often extreme conditions of a border situation (in the direct and existential sense of this expression). She could not focus on creating a well-groomed, comfortable, burgher environment, because it was constantly being destroyed. Traces of endless wars, upheavals, arbitrariness of the authorities, the incompleteness of the next construction or perestroika are clearly visible on her long-suffering body. This unsettled, disorganized, too spacious physical landscape of Russia produces a corresponding intellectual and mental landscape, where you can find anything but regularity, order, and completeness of the work begun. But the hope for a miracle, an extraordinary experiment, a fantastic project is growing.

In such circumstances, having given up on the unattainable welfare and social guarantees of their existence, the Russian intellectual is more inclined to think about transcendental rather than empirical questions of his being. His soul, mind and consciousness are not worried about the prose of life and private problems, but the great, transcendent, eternally open questions of the meaning of being of an individual and the inscrutable fate of the unfortunate native Fatherland, whose suffering he experiences as his own. This gives the whole culture and especially philosophy a tense moral tone, a deep historiosophical fullness, a fundamental theological and metaphysical character from the works of the first chroniclers and hagiographers to the painful reflections of Westerners and Slavophiles, both of the present century and of the past.

in the post-revolutionary period in the transformed form of the postulates of civic responsibility, moral code, Soviet patriotism, by inertia, nevertheless continued to live the paradigms of consciousness laid down centuries earlier.

The Old Testament messianism of Marxism, coupled with Prussian dialectics, combined in Russia with the neophyte aspirations of local radicals, who longed for the speedy construction of the kingdom of God on earth and by earthly means. Russia did not know the Renaissance and Reformation, and the Enlightenment affected only the tops of society. The functional division of sacred and secular values ​​characteristic of the West did not take place in it, which aggravated the degree of delusion of fiery revolutionaries who, with fanatical zeal, under the influence of their quasi-religion, turned Russia into a testing ground for a world experiment in building a new society, a new nature and a new person.

Adherents of the new ideology did not have time to fully realize their God-fighting satanic plan, the well-known communist triad, but the disastrous consequences of their activities are obvious: the traditional society with a special way of life of various estates was destroyed; nature has been crippled and colossal resources have been spent on environmentally harmful projects; a truly new type of person has grown up - a mankurt without historical memory and moral principles, known in the West as Homo soveticus, which Dostoevsky brilliantly foresaw in Possessed. Truly, the 20th century has turned into Calvary for the peoples inhabiting a vast empire, the symbol of the end of which was the sinister Chernobyl.

However, despite the severity of the current situation, it is not hopeless. Parallel to the process of destruction, there is a process of creation in various spheres of society under the influence of Western and Eastern experience and in the necessary controversy with it. The imperial idea has not died out, but the future of Russia is not connected with it (although it needs a strong statehood with separation of powers and democratic institutions).

Turning to the experience of Western civilization, many see only its outward material success. However, its deep innermost foundation is the system of Christian values ​​laid down more than one and a half thousand years ago. Without a sacral foundation, a society is built on sand, and if its supporting stones are removed from the grandiose building of Western society, it will not stand.

Russia also had a similar system of values, which in a diabolical frenzy was destroyed almost to the ground and is now slowly beginning to be erected again. Before our eyes, a unique process is unfolding - after the domination of totalitarian ideology with an ugly cult of leaders, reminiscent of pagan veneration of Roman emperors and Eastern tyrants, for the second time in the history of the country, its baptism, Christianization, evangelization takes place. At the same time, the spiritual foundations and traditions of many peoples and ethnic groups inhabiting Russia are being revived.

Now we are witnessing the long-awaited combination of pre-revolutionary, emigre and now sprouting autochthonous thought, the synthesis of which gives hope for future shoots. However, the fruits of culture and especially philosophy ripen slowly, and considerable patience will have to be stocked up until the time when they can be enjoyed. Now the necessary cultural layer is being restored after upheavals and cataclysms, a basis is being created, an infrastructure for the full-blooded existence and development of Russian thought in its natural maternal womb.

After considering the historical, geopolitical, cultural factors external to philosophy that had a formative influence on Russian thought, we turn to clarifying the internal features. In a brief thesis form, one can point out the following immanent features of it.

First of all, this is sophianism, on the basis of which the most developed domestic sophiology compared to foreign philosophical thought has developed from the medieval veneration of Sophia the Wisdom of God to the works of Soloviev, Florensky, Frank. Philosophy in the light of this tradition appears not just as a useful acquisition of the mind, which is of an instrumental, pragmatic nature, but as the highest spiritual value.

It is not an abstract, impersonal, detached kind of cognition of being, but, on the contrary, a personally rooted, dramatic empathy for reality, connected with the whole human being. Ratio is not excluded, but included in the system of all-encompassing intuitive-emotional cognition of the world as a necessary, but not the highest form of its comprehension. The inexpressible essence of Sophia cannot be conveyed in the final definitions of reason, but can be displayed in an artistic, plastic, aesthetic form. Therefore, the domestic Sophian tradition found the deepest reflection in temple building, iconography, hymnography, poetry, embodied not only by verbal, but also non-verbal means, the latter conveying the inexhaustible symbolic fullness of Sophia more meaningfully and impressively.

This leading dominant of Russian philosophizing was formed under the influence of the inspired synthesis of "the wisdom of the Bible and the wisdom of Athens" (S. S. Averintsev) transferred from Byzantium after the baptism of Rus'. The topic of Slavic Russian thinking was set by the books of the Bible and especially the Psalter, in which the prophet and King David appears in a threefold sense: as a singer of sacred hymns, as a compiler of a divinely inspired book, and himself as a ten-stringed instrument vibrating to the glory of the Lord with five senses and five - the mind.

In the region of Slavia orthodoxa (R. Picchio), since the time of the Enlightener of the Slavs Konstantin Cyril, a different tradition of thinking has developed than in the West, where scholasticism dominated among various currents and where theology and philosophizing developed at a high conceptual and theoretical level and in bookish Latin as a special language of the intellectual elite. Therefore, in the Western tradition, a philosopher is, first of all, a professional who has retired to a cell or office, improving his sharp mind by reading books and public disputes with his own kind.

The path of St. Cyril was different. In adolescence, like St. Gregory of Nazianzus and the prophet Solomon, he experienced a prophetic dream, where the divine Wisdom, shining with an unearthly light, appeared to him, with which the rite of spiritual betrothal was performed. After that, the young man was filled with divine grace, began to comprehend the secrets of life, gradually turning into an educator of entire peoples. He and his brother Methodius translated the most important texts of Holy Scripture into the Old Slavonic language understandable to the people. Therefore, theology and philosophy, built on the basis of the interpretation of the Bible and the works of patristics, did not become the sphere of activity of a narrow circle of professionals, as it was in the West, but spread throughout the entire context of culture, dispersed into many areas of creative activity.

And the philosopher in the original Cyrillo-Methodian tradition is an educator, an ascetic, a publicist, a participant in the Socratic dialogue, a defender of professed values, ready to endure and suffer for them. He is not the creator of speculative systems, but a teacher and mentor who creates a life-building philosophy. He teaches us only how to think, but above all how to live. This is the source of the practical moral-anthropological character of Russian thought, addressed to the burning problems of real life, compassionate to people, which has become one of its main features.

But in order to deeply touch, shock, take out of the state of ordinary hibernation and the routine, mechanical performance of worldly duties, one must penetrate into the very core of human existence. On this basis, a special emotionally accentuated epistemology of the heart is formed, which is considered the highest body of authority from ancient Russian scribes to Yurkevich and Bishop Luka VoynoYasenetsky. This trend echoes the amor Dei of Blessed Augustine, who was highly valued in Rus' from ancient times, for the confessional nature of his philosophy is very much in tune with the Russian mentality.

In contrast, the discursive peripatetic tradition in the spirit of St. Thomas Aquinas did not receive wide distribution, although the "Source of Knowledge" ev. John of Damascus, who was called Thomas Aquinas of the Orthodox East, was very authoritative in Rus', and scholastic scholarship nestled in theological academies already from the 17th century, becoming dominant in the subsequent period. However, this circumstance does not mean the absence of theology and philosophy in medieval Rus', as is often claimed. They were and developed in the spirit of the mystical theology of St. Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Gregory Palamas. Hesychasm, iconography and eldership are evidence of this.

The ascetic line of philosophy from Theodosius of the Caves, Nil Sorsky, Joseph Volotsky and many other, often unknown, monks to the metropolitans Platon (Levshin), Filaret (Drozdov) and, finally, N. F. Fedorov, an ascetic in the world, is one of the most important in domestic tradition. Grigory Skvoroda, Nikolai Gogol, Konstantin Leontiev, Theophan the Recluse adjoin it, it underlies the spiritual concentration of many cultural figures who despised external blessings for the sake of internal burning and serving their chosen goal. The element of asceticism, renunciation of the world, contempt for the false brilliance of the transient temptations of wealth and power is inherent in representatives of many cultures, but in Russian it has always been highly valued.

2. Stages of development of the hesychast tradition

Hesychast tradition (from the Greek term - peace, silence) is a certain school of spiritual practice that has been developing since the 4th century. and up to our days. Three most important stages can be distinguished in this long journey: 1) classical asceticism and mysticism of early Christian monasticism of the 4th-7th centuries; 2) hesychast revival in Byzantium XIII-XIV centuries; 3) the revival of Hesychasm in Russia in the XIX-XX centuries. At the first stage, the “Spiritual Conversations” of pseudo Macarius of Egypt and the treatises of Evagrius of Pontus open the tradition as fundamental texts. On the whole, ascetic literature is extraordinarily abundant and multi-genre, here - lives, legends, sermons, systematic treatises. Here, following Macarius and Evagrius, Sts. John of the Ladder and Isaac the Syrian. However, in the recent period, the important role of some others has become clear: Diadochus of Photiki, Barsanuphius and John of Gaz, Hesychius of Sinai. Their study led to the conclusion that the key elements of hesychast practice, the doctrine of unceasing prayer and the Jesus Prayer, which were often considered innovations of the late Byzantine period, in fact, were fully formed already in the classical period, in the 5th-7th centuries.

Already in Evagrius and pseudo-Macarius, the main features of the emerging mystical school were clearly identified. At the beginning of it, the closeness and partly the influence of the previous late antique schools, the asceticism of the Stoics and the mysticism of Neoplatonism, are noticeable; of these, in particular, most of its main terms passed into Hesychasm. The general scheme of the put forward path of spiritual practice and mystical life: the path leading through the purification of the soul to dispassion, and then to mystical contemplation, union with God. But for all that, it was a predominantly new kind of phenomenon. At the beginning of the path of asceticism, it became - and acquired a huge role - repentance that came from the Jewish tradition. The dualism of body and soul was gradually replaced by holism. The fight against passions took the form of "smart art" - a vast and very peculiar discipline or art of introspection and control of consciousness, based on new principles and approaches to human psychology. The core and main content of spiritual practice was the school of prayer, in which the connection between man and God was revealed as a sphere of personal and dialogic communication. At the same time, the mystical path (feat) was structured as a hierarchy of forms or steps of prayerful communion with God, which, developing and deepening, transforms a person and more fully unites him Divine life. Man recognizes this life as new genus of being, the essence and content of which is Love - Divine Love, "A, meaning perfect mutual giving, mutual penetration (). Divine being here is an ontological horizon, characterized by the predicates of perfect communication and love and called, by definition, the horizon of personal being. Therefore, union with God brings for a person the development and affirmation of the personal principle in him, the affirmation of his individuality through the uniqueness of his personal relationship with God.In addition, in the union there is another aspect, light: in God's communion, God is perceived as Divine Light; and the key sacred event for Hesychasm is the Transfiguration, in which the Communion of God appears precisely as a combination of light perceptions and dialogic communion.

The Light of Tabor is interpreted here as a supernatural combination of the principles of Light and Personality: a mystical reality that is fundamentally different from the Light of the neo-Platonists.

The fullness of the connection, the goal of the mystical path, is expressed by the concept of Deification (). This is the central concept of the hesychast tradition, the mystical and anthropological ideal of Orthodoxy. It is already clear from what has been said that deification is a kind of mystical transcendence; and this view is different from anything we find in other traditions. The mysticism of deification is not the mysticism of ecstasy, meditation or contemplation. The practice of the hesychast is directed directly and directly to the integral and actual transmutation of the "created fallen" nature of man into the Divine nature. It is this transformation that is called the Deification of man. It is clear that it is impossible only by the own action of isolated human nature; but due to the dialogic nature of communion with God, which presupposes freedom, it is also impossible by a purely external action, without the will and participation of man. Orthodoxy and Hesychasm affirm that deification is accomplished through synergy - special cooperation and conformity, the concordant action of the free will of man and Divine grace. Synergy is the second key concept of Hesychasm, expressing the specific character of Deification as a personal transcendence. Unlike all ancient, as well as all Eastern mysticism, the path of deification does not require dissolution and loss, but the strengthening and expansion of individual self-consciousness, the specific personal identity of a person. But at the same time, this is a real transcendence, which means the acquisition of the predicates of another, Divine being, and the overcoming of the beginnings of sin, death and finiteness that determined the former, “old” being. The sacred event that sets the prototype, the archetype of such overcoming, is Easter - and therefore the well-known fact that it is Easter (as in the West - Christmas) in Orthodoxy and in Russia is perceived as the focus of Sacred History and the central holiday of Christianity, reflects a deep penetration of all Orthodoxy with the ideas of Theosis and Hesychast spirituality. In general, the entire described complex, consisting not so much of ideas as of the provisions of practice and the conclusions of experience, can be considered as a special type of anthropology, a kind of anthropological model, the main distinguishing feature of which is ontological openness: an expanded and dynamic vision of the phenomenon person.

As was said, all these foundations of Hesychasm arose and took shape already at its first stage. The contribution of the next, late Byzantine, stage is already of a different nature: there is, first of all, a deepening and reflection of the originality of the tradition. In the extremely rich content of this stage, we will now note only three points. First, there is a development of practical forms that are most adequate to the fundamental holism of hesychast anthropology. Hesychasm asserts that the path of deification brings transformation, transcending not only the mind and consciousness, but the whole human personality including the physical being. And in hesychasm XII-XIV centuries. the discourse of the body was intensively developed and discussed: the forms of participation of the body in prayer, the role of sensory perception and the phenomenon of "noisy feelings" - a radical expansion, "rejection" of the means of human perception in mystical experience. Further, the realization began to be outlined not of the narrowly monastic, but of the universal, all-human essence of the hesychast approach to man. Deification was definitely perceived as an ontological thesis, a vocation of human nature as such - but the path to it was the property of selected individuals and a narrow, extremely specific sphere of achievement. This apparent contradiction became one of the incentives for further thinking and development of the tradition. And finally - the third - the tradition is very advanced in its conceptual self-clarification and self-expression. Hesychasm found its key beginning and term, which were missing for understanding its practice and the anthropological and theological premises behind it. That beginning was energy. In hesychast disputes, and above all through the works of St. Gregory Palamas, it became clear that hesychasm as a whole is, first of all, a speech about energy, a discourse of energy: the fight against passions is the art of controlling the multitude of all energies of a person, prayerful doing means gathering these energies into a single aspiration to God, and synergy and Deification represent nothing more than a combination of human energies and Divine energy, grace. However, the hesychast discourse of energy, by its appearance introducing tradition into the complex and centuries-old philosophical and theological problems, gave rise to many problems and questions. An integral doctrine of energy was by no means created here, and the very concept of energy remained in many (especially theological) respects rather vague and controversial. The topic was open but far from complete; and the same can be said about the other two topics of the stage mentioned above: they all remained tasks for the future.

Not all of these tasks were equally perceived by the last, Russian, stage, which came half a millennium later, following the activities of St. Paisius (Velichkovsky) and the appearance of the Russian "Philokalia". (It should, however, be mentioned that this was already the second period of the spread of Hesychasm in Russia: the first was the so-called second South Slavic influence in the XIV-XV centuries, associated with the names of St. Sergius of Radonezh, Andrei Rublev, Nil of Sorsky.) Practice of Jesus prayer in all its aspects, including somatics, received a new deepening, subtle systematization and penetrating presentation by Sts. Ignatius Bryanchaninov and especially Theophan the Recluse, and already in our century - at St. Siluan of Athos and his disciple Archimandrite Sophronius. The doctrine of energy was thoroughly studied by the theologians of the Russian emigration, primarily Krivoshein, Vl. Lossky, Meyendorff. But the most significant and new for the tradition was connected with the remaining of the three topics: with the disclosure of the universal essence of Hesychasm. New forms arose, through which hesychasm goes far beyond the limits of the monastic milieu. Here were eldership with its famous hearth in Optina, the concept of a “monastery in the world”, coming from the Slavic nophiles, the development of the technique of unceasing prayer, which made it possible to combine it with worldly activities, and many others. etc. The influence of hesychasm is spreading with unprecedented breadth both in the sphere of popular religiosity and in the sphere of culture (albeit on a smaller scale). And this process, like the hesychast revival in Byzantium, by no means dried up on its own, but was interrupted by a historical catastrophe.

3. Philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of "hesychasm"

What role can the phenomenon of hesychasm play for philosophy? And above all: will not any connection with it already obviously mean the rejection of philosophy from some of its necessary qualities, from its character as a completely autonomous, self-developing thought? This is often said about the connections of philosophy with religion. But the sweeping statement is incorrect; both the content of the religious sphere and the forms of its interaction with philosophy are very diverse. It is not difficult to see, in particular, that such forms of the religious as dogmatic theology, speculative mysticism, and spiritual practice stand in very different relation to philosophical thought. The fruitful role of mysticism for philosophical development is a classic fact in the history of philosophy, which has many examples. The largest of these are the influence of Orphic and Pythagorean mysticism on Platonism and Neoplatonism, as well as the connection of classical German idealism with the mysticism of Eckhart, Boehme and their followers. At the same time, however, in most known examples, there was an interaction of speculative mysticism with idealistic philosophy, teachings from the tradition of European metaphysics. Today this type of philosophy already belongs to history, and modern thought has chosen the line of overcoming metaphysics. But there is another combination of types of religious and philosophical content, in which their interaction can be not distorting and fettering, but constructive and fruitful for philosophy. Let us consider the relationship between the sphere of religious - in particular, mystical - practice and phenomenological philosophy.

Religious content appears here as a certain area of ​​experience that does not have any built-in hermeneutics: it does not set a priori rules and guidelines for its description and interpretation. Here there are various phenomena of consciousness, phenomena of human activity, and philosophy can make them the object of observation and description. And just as, say, the late Heidegger makes the phenomenon of technology, a thing, a work of art the subject of philosophy, so can hesychasm become the subject of philosophy: the phenomenon and experience of a person in a feat. Of course, these phenomena and experiences belong to the limiting, limiting areas of anthropological reality. Therefore, they may require a special approach from philosophy, but for the same reason they may turn out to be more productive for it: as, say, according to Jaspers, the most important properties of human nature are revealed in borderline situations.

The next element of context is theology. As is already clear, the philosophy that is being outlined must take a completely different position in relation to it than in relation to the living experience of achievement. Unlike the second one, the first one has its own “built-in hermeneutics”. It can be very different in different schools and directions, but theology is always a theoretical, conceptualized discourse, completely or to a large extent alternative to philosophical discourse: for it has a deliberately different organization, "grammar", including a number of rules. , concepts and provisions that are alien in philosophical discourse. Therefore, in contrast to the stimulating neighborhood of spiritual practice, the neighborhood of theology is a double-edged thing, not only promising, but also dangerous for philosophy (for which there are many illustrations in Russian thought). Undoubtedly, it can also be and is stimulating. Thus, Gadamer writes: "When Martin Heidegger was invited to Marburg in 1923, his thought came into fruitful, intense contact with modern Protestant theology, and thanks to this, in 1927, his main work, Being and Time, appeared" . The possibility, and sometimes naturalness, expediency, even the need to take it into account and involve it, is by no means excluded, but it always and certainly implies a certain distancing and rethinking.

But these are only general methodological remarks. Specifically, the philosophy that has in its field of vision the anthropological experience of hesychasm, the "hesychast man", cannot but have contacts - or, perhaps, repulsions - with the theology that also addresses this experience. What is this theology? First of all, this is Orthodox mystical theology, a specific type of theology that strives to be a direct expression of spiritual practice, the experience of life in God. Unlike ordinary “theoretical” or academic theology, mystical theology merges closely with the sphere of mystical ascetic experience, as if serving as its own “direct speech”, providing it with primary verbalization, which is only partly systematization and conceptualization. The texts of mystical theology combine the features of ascetic and theological writings, and its largest representatives - of whom, in fact, there are only two in the entire history of Orthodoxy, Sts. Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas (however, St. Simeon the New Theologian should not be forgotten after them) are ascetics and theologians in equal measure. Thus, the method of mystical theology is to a certain extent phenomenological, and philosophy will inevitably reproduce or simply perceive the individual elements of its verbalizing effort: for example, for it, Palamas’s discovery, obtained in a single conjugation of mystical and theological efforts, cannot fail to serve as a parting word and guideline. Hesychasm is primarily about energy. However, the subject should remain only hesychasm itself as a phenomenon given in the original corpus of its practical texts.

Further, moving from a religious context to a philosophical one, we reach an intermediate sphere - Russian “religious philosophy”. It was said that the internal logic of the path of Russian thought leads to the topics discussed. The grounds for such a statement are now obvious. Russian philosophy included in its tasks the work of national self-awareness, the philosophical expression of the spiritual experience contained in the history, religion, culture of Russia.The basis and core of this spiritual experience was, as Pushkin noted, the "Greek confession", Orthodoxy; and the core of Orthodoxy, what it is perceived in Russia, there was, no doubt, the sphere of monasticism and asceticism - in other words, Hesychasm. So Rozanov wrote - as always with exaggeration, but also with a deep sense of truth: in all Christianity "Russia has passed only a narrow path, took only one thread: these are ... the precepts of the Syrian, Egyptian and Athos hermitage. "Many phenomena of Russian life - for example, the already mentioned tradition of eldership - testify to the fact that in Russian spirituality, the Russian warehouse of consciousness, this sphere belonged to some special charisma , a special authority that extended to the whole way of life and culture. Hesychasm left a strong imprint on the Russian consciousness, the traces of which have not disappeared to this day. (An example can be seen in the fact that with the liberation from communism, the theme of repentance immediately and persistently appeared. Its appearance is a clear trace of the hesychast consciousness, for which repentance is the only gate to a new life, and only from it can spiritual change begin. But here the whole measure of the country’s falling out of its history is also visible: the topic turned out to be alien to the new reality and passed only as a vague and distorted ghost that briefly surfaced from the collective subconscious.) Therefore, the reflection of hesychast mysticism and anthropology could always and rightfully be considered part of the natural problems of Russian thought.

However, her story was different. If among the older Slavophiles, and especially among Ivan Kireyevsky, there was an appeal to the hesychast tradition, but there was by no means a developed philosophy, then at the next stage, with Vladimir Solovyov, a developed philosophy appeared, but there was by no means an appeal to hesychasm. In search of spiritual sources, the Kireevskys traveled to Optina, while Solovyov went to London. With an excellent literary taste, he was clearly a man of bad mystical taste and intuition, and the sophian adventures of his brilliant personality had a strong effect on the path of Russian philosophy. The entire short period of its heyday, today called the Russian Religious-Philosophical Renaissance, stands under the sign of Solovyov and his sophianic mysticism, although at the same time in Russia there is a revival of Hesychasm. Only towards the end of this period, before the most tragic cliff, the two channels begin to converge. This was facilitated by a specific event in the ecclesiastical milieu: the conflict over imyaslaviya, which attracted the attention of many philosophers - Florensky, Bulgakov, Ern, Losev. But their works on this subject were already being written when the philosophical process in Russia was interrupted (and for the most part they are only now reaching the reader). Moreover, they still do not consider the phenomenon of Hesychasm as such, but only involve the beginnings of the Palamite theology of energies. In the Diaspora, however, the Hesychast tradition was studied actively and fruitfully, but, as we said, not by philosophers, but by theologians. As a result, the work of philosophy today is forced, in essence, to begin anew. But there is not only a negative side to this: even if the metaphysics of the beginning of the century tried to enter the hesychast world, its approach would hardly satisfy us today, in the era of overcoming metaphysics.

Turning to the philosophical context, we see its first necessary element - philosophical anthropology. The hesychast experience that we wish to introduce into the field of philosophical consideration is an anthropological experience; we see in it a certain image of a person, models of consciousness and activity, methods of control, changes in the transcending of the inner reality of a person, etc. But how can and is it possible at all to introduce an experience of this kind into philosophy? We said above that phenomenology allows us to do this; but the phenomenological attitude must by no means be understood as a carte blanche for turning any arbitrarily chosen facts and propositions about man into philosophical truths. On this path, it is very easy to deviate into a flawed kind of philosophy, which M. Foucault calls the "anthropological dream" and describes as follows: boundaries and, finally, the very truth of all truth... the sub-critical analysis of what man is becomes an analysis of what can be given to human experience in general. Foucault's criticism is solid, and it must be admitted that the criticized way of philosophizing is, in fact, typical of modern (and not only modern) anthropologism. And yet, it turns out that this criticism does not disavow any and all anthropologism and, in a certain direction, leaves the possibility and freedom for philosophical speech about man (although Foucault himself calls this direction “the death of man”). From the "anthropological dream" an "awakening" is possible, and Nietzsche has already found the way to it, whose attitude Foucault describes as follows: some fundamental thought about being. Nietzsche's conception of the superman was the first concrete way of such a "separation" from the "anthropological field embraced entirely". According to Foucault, there may be other ways, but in any case, "separation" means "the death of man" and the complete rejection of the anthropological attitude in philosophy.

Note now that this last Foucault's thesis depends entirely on the interpretation of terms. Hegel teaches that in every detachment one can find not only what is different, but also something in common with the original soil. And the new philosophical reality, obtained by breaking away from the empirical and "pre-critically" considered man - but, nevertheless, according to Foucault, "on the basis" of him, - can be called not only the "death of man", but, with the same right, and his "resurrection". Separation, however, can be viewed not only as a setting of anti-anthropologism, but with the same right as a setting for the search and creation of an extended and generalized, ontologically open anthropology: metaanthropology. The idea of ​​such an anthropological approach, which would make a "separation" from man, closed in his own nature and empirical givenness, ontologically empty, and would find the way to a kind of metaanthropology, was also repeatedly expressed in our century. For the first time, Max Scheler spoke about it in his late Philosophical Worldview, where he proposed the term "metaanthropology" itself. Then, in theological discourse, the idea was developed by X. W. von Balthazar, who posed the question, “is it not possible today to replace metaphysics (i.e., the old outdated picture of the world) as (a) put metaanthropology”, based on the personal and dialogic vision of man in Christianity As we can see, different and even antagonistic modern approaches to the problem of man agree on the main thing: whether in a negative way, like Nietzsche and Foucault, or in a positive way, like Scheler and Balthazar, but everyone is talking about philosophical death a self-contained, ontologically immobile person and about the possibility of a new life in “separation” from him, finding a way out into a new ontological space: the space of metaanthropology. But cardinal differences begin further, in the understanding of this space and in the assessment of the possibility and expediency of preserving an anthropological interpretation for it. Recalling the popular antithesis of the Silver Age, we can say that in the space of metaanthropology, a god-man and a man-god can be revealed; it can be constructed as neoanthropology and as antianthropology; can define itself as a servant of theology and as an anti-theology, as well as as a post-theology. With this breadth of possibilities, metaanthropology is emerging as a promising trend in modern philosophy. And it is already clear to us that the hesychast practical anthropology of energetic deification suggests a new approach to philosophy and a path in this direction. In Foucault's terms, this approach is not limited to a "sub-critical analysis" of anthropological reality, for it is already critical in its very experimental basis: for the philosophy of the ascetic there is nothing else but practical criticism a person to which philosophical criticism serves as a necessary correlate. In Scheler's terms, this approach is a kind of metaanthropology, and in its main features it is original and does not repeat others. By emphasizing the actual nature of the transcending of human nature in deification, he represents the most radical "separation" from the present, "old" man.

4. Meeting ancient tradition with modern thinking

Hesychasm is the mystic of deification, and in historical Orthodoxy in particular, in Russian Christianity, he has always been a living ferment, a creative and dynamic principle. During the periods of the hesychast revival, the last of which, already in our century, was interrupted by the Russian catastrophe, new forms were created in the tradition, the areas of its existence expanded, and the main direction of this creative process was precisely the disclosure of its universal content, the emergence into the "world" without reduction of all otherness to the "world" and mystical heights. In no way does Hesychasm assert itself as " secret doctrine", an esoteric teaching, protected by magical prohibitions from disclosure; on the contrary, according to an authoritative judgment, "Hesychasm is, in principle, a universal path." And if this is so, the meeting of the ancient tradition with the participatory thinking of the modern knowing mind is not impossible.

What does the meeting require of us? First of all, the ability to hear the Tradition, read and understand its testimony. But the tradition of hesychasm is a phenomenon of a specific kind, and such a task requires a special, difficult methodological attack. One must see what this evidence is and how to penetrate it: what kind of material it contains, and how this material should be handled.

The "material" of the mystical-ascetic tradition is spiritual experience, which, moreover, belongs mainly to the genus of mystical experience. This is by no means the kind with which the European "experimental sciences" deal, and we must have to formulate some understanding of its nature and properties. It is also significant that the Tradition includes not only experience in its primary form ("raw" or "empirical" experience), but direct data of ascetic practice. Hesychasm is a developed tradition, where experience is in a certain way verified and built, organized and structured, it is subject to certain criteria, and its verbal transmission is a special genre, or "ascetic discourse", presented in an extensive corpus of texts from the 4th century BC. to the present day. This discourse is not limited to a simple description of data, but also carries out the interpretation of experience, for which certain principles and rules are also created in it.

Thus, the content of the Tradition is simply "experience", but experience worked out; it also includes a certain set of principles, guidelines and procedures concerning the organization and interpretation of experience. Theophan the Recluse writes: "The main thing they (the Holy Fathers) were looking for and what they advised was to understand the spiritual structure and be able to keep it." It is worth remembering that since ancient times, one of the names for hesychast practice was "method" - simply a method without any attribute. On the other hand, we note that the Tradition certainly understands itself as a Path (the path to God, the path of deification, a spiritual process ...), this is almost an axiom for a spiritual tradition; and, therefore, here the Path is represented as the Method. In the consciousness of Tradition, the same connection is reproduced that was established by Greek metaphysics: Method and Way as one semantic nest, variants of one name for the name of the deed and life of the mind, Here the Hellenic roots of hesychast consciousness appear. But, further, we can say that in its methodological aspect, Tradition is not just a method. The hesychast experience is the experience of a spiritual process in which, as tradition suggests, the revelation and fulfillment of the very nature of man takes place. In such an experience, aspects of organization, verification, interpretation should be especially developed and branched out. "Ancient Christianity introduced many important changes into ancient asceticism; it ... shifted the direction of the practices of oneself towards hermeneutics of oneself and deciphering oneself," and in mature hesychasm this direction is even stronger. Representing a "complete" experience and method, i.e. experience, endowed with everything necessary to be an "experience that reveals nature" (the nature of man, in this case), Tradition can be considered as an "organon" in the sense of a complete practical-theoretical canon of a certain kind of experience, which this concept has acquired in theory scientific knowledge(cf., for example: "The Aristotelian organon is adequate to the understanding of "fusis", and the Tradition is the reconstruction of this hesychast organon. In it we have a self-report, a self-understanding of the Tradition").

Therefore, the first task that the meeting with the Tradition sets before us is the understanding of oneself; and dialogue requires us to penetrate into this immanent understanding before building our own, external. However, our position does not mean unconditional acceptance of the "inner organon", complete adherence to it. Our cognizing consciousness is a scientific consciousness, although a participatory one acts and remains "other" in relation to Tradition. As "scientific", it seeks to translate the contents of the Tradition into its own language, into its own discourse, its own norms of organization; it wants to learn to read, to understand the metaphysical or psychological or other content contained in the Tradition. As a “participant,” it seeks to do this not by forcibly imposing ready-made concepts, methods, and paradigms, but through communication, in which it will create new concepts, methods, and paradigms for itself, in accordance with what it hears from its dialogical partner. In other words, the cognizing consciousness must develop its own "individual approach" to Tradition in dialogue with Tradition: its own view of its experiential content and its own hermeneutics of its discourse. Along with the hesychast organon, which exists in the Tradition itself, "internal", it is necessary to form another, "external" organon, which would be used by the "scientifically involved" consciousness for its tasks. In such an organon, both structuring and interpretation of experience will be different than in the organon internal; but, arising in dialogue with Tradition, they will also be different than in any organon given a priori, not only in the organon of positivist science, but, say, in the phenomenological organon as well.

Let us briefly outline some interpretation of the concepts of inner experience and mystical experience. "The concept of experience, paradoxically as it may sound, is 'among the least clear concepts we have,' writes Gadamer. Undoubtedly, this concept has achieved great distinctness in the natural sciences (although in modern physics this distinctness threatens to collapse), where a whole formalized canon of experimental (experimental) science, but it is equally certain that the concept of experience as a "scientific experiment" does not correspond to the situation in many vast areas of human experience, historical and philosophical, aesthetic and religious. And for these areas of experience there is no longer any single conceptual basis Of the main stages in the philosophical history of the concept associated with the names of Aristotle, Hegel, and Husserl (leaving aside those relating only to the "sciences of nature"), we summarize the following necessary points. ": this is precisely the meaning of the Hegelian definition in the "Phenomenology of Spirit": "The dialectical movement performed by consciousness in itself, both in relation to its knowledge and in relation to its object, since for it a new true object arises from this, is, in fact, that what is called experience (Erfahrung)." In this interpretation of experience, one can catch some structural correspondence with scientific experience: the dual structure "observation-registration" (including "remembering", saving the result of experience) in the experience of consciousness is transcribed into the dual structure "perception of the object of consciousness, the turn of consciousness, the constitution of a new true object." Further, in experience, the opposition action-to-bearing is overcome, which is also reflected by the semantics of the concept: experience is what one experiences, one undergoes (test, skill - in asceticism), but this is also what one gets. This two-sidedness of experience, which is very important in the analysis of the experience of hesychasm, is most explicated in the concept of experience as "experience of intentionality" in phenomenology. This is one of the manifestations of a certain similarity of attitudes and, in part, even of roots, which is found between "hesychast consciousness" and "phenomenological consciousness." Corresponding to the character of hesychast experience is also the emphasized subjectivity of phenomenological experience, the assertion of the latter as "experience experienced" (Erlebnis, in contrast to the impersonal Erfahrung), which always belongs to a certain personal consciousness.

If experience itself is already an "obscure concept," then "internal experience" will have to be considered not only an obscure, but a dubious, and even non-existent concept. The initial ideas about it are a complex of intuitions, supported by a kind of axiology: it is assumed that "internal experience" is the experience of introspection - "observing oneself", fixing one's own internal (mental) contents, and such an experience constitutes a necessary accessory of developed self-consciousness, speaks of the richness of "internal world" and "inner life" of man. But these intuitions do not stand up to scrutiny. The experience of consciousness is initially objective, and if I “turn consciousness inwards” as an end in itself, I will find emptiness or fictions that form the sphere of a falsely substantiated, objectified I. There are no entities and objects that I could “observe in myself”, my “pure inside "Empty abstraction, and "pure introspection", in fact, is not feasible. Another objection is actively put forward by the philosophy of language, analytic philosophy and other logistic trends: they insist that all categories from the "discourse of internal reality" internal experience, internal perception, introspection, etc. just metaphors. It is impossible to give them a direct meaning, since the inner reality is incommunicable by linguistic means: it is answered by "inner speech", which is fundamentally incommensurable with the ordinary speech of communication, communication. Both objections are solid, and as a result of them, philosophy, for the most part, avoids the concept of internal experience, connecting with it fears of objectification of the Self, or linguistic nonsense. Yet both of them still do not close any possibility of giving "inner experience" some correct meaning.

The argument "from language" is absolute only within certain narrow theories of language and communication; from other positions, no less justified, it is only partly true and, without carrying a complete prohibition, it only leads to the need for additional prerequisites that make it possible to understand inner experience. The first argument forces us to essentially rethink the nature of inner experience, forces us to remove a certain halo that ordinary consciousness surrounds it with, but still does not force us to completely discard the concept. Man does not find in his "pure interior" any objects for observation; but, nevertheless, his "inner life" is not a fiction, it is meaningful and it is accessible to his consciousness. But its contents are not essences and not objects, but actions, impulses, impulses. A person is given to himself only in his manifestations, activity, dynamics, and his self-observation is meaningful only when it is directed to this dynamics. At the same time, it is forced to follow the dynamics, thereby obeying it and integrating into it, becoming its element. And this means that inner experience turns out to be not an end in itself and self-valuable "looking inside", but a moment or aspect of this or that activity. This activity can equally be both objective, externally expressed, and spiritual and soul activity, the work of consciousness and will, internal impulses. "Internal experience (Selbsterfahrung) is, first of all, awareness of one's own aspirations, which differs from abstract knowledge in that it changes a person's life." Thus, a correctly posed inner experience is always an experience about some activity and in its composition. This is exactly how he appears in phenomenology: about the constitution of the structures of transcendental subjectivity, as an experience of intentional receptivity; and it appears in the same way in hesychasm: concerning the Spiritual Process as the experience of sobriety.

Finally, for mystical experience, conceptualization has the most meager results. In none of the touching areas of theology, philosophy, history of religion, psychology ... there is a solid base, a fundamental concept that would define the essence and boundaries of the phenomenon, although, as James's work states, hopelessly old, but never found a modern equivalent, " all roots religious life, as well as its center, we must look for in mystical states of consciousness. "Here reigns vague approximation, dubious improvisation, or frank reduction; and, in particular, James himself's attempt to lay the theoretical foundation of the topic did not go beyond the second one, highlighting "four main sign of mystical experiences": inexpressibility, intuitiveness, short duration, inactivity of the will.

The area of ​​mystical experience is made up of phenomena that are not so much rare or exceptional, extraordinary, but those that can be called ontologically borderline: phenomena in which "it is a question" of overcoming boundaries, going beyond the very mode of human existence, the ontological horizon of human existence, i.e. "here being", cash empirical reality. The highly unscientific turn "in question" is not accidental here. Whether an actual ontological exit is really achieved and carried out in mystical experience and in what sense, to what otherness, these are subtle and deep questions that have not yet found not only an indisputable answer, but also a generally correct statement. But there is every reason to assert that such a way out is precisely what is thematized in mystical experience as such, constituting its desired and its striving. This means that about the "ontological exit" i.e. transformation, the transcendence of the fundamental predicates of present existence in mystical experience, we, perhaps, cannot speak in the sense of the actual achievement of some essences (in "essential discourse"), this question remains open; but we can talk about such an exit in the sense of an overall orientation, the aspiration of human energies towards it, in other words, energetically, in the "discourse of energy." The defining difference of this philosophical discourse is the generative role of the principle of energy: all categories are considered here primarily in their relation to energy, "energy content".

The key category of the hesychast model of reality is energy; and, accordingly, the entire discourse of energy in European thought is the most important part of the described context. This discourse, rather, is not rich, but it is very peculiar in composition. The concept of energy was introduced by Aristotle and, although it was not included in his 10 main categories, it played a prominent role in both metaphysics and physics. Being close in meaning to the concepts of action, activity, movement, it, in contrast to them, included a significant element of completeness, subordination to the principles of purpose and form, and due to this, it came closer to the concepts of entelechy and essence. However, it did not go beyond ancient philosophy. Even scholasticism, which so closely followed the Aristotelian system of concepts, did not retain the category of energy as such in its arsenal, but switched to its Latin translation astus, act, which was far from being an exact equivalent. Another, even more remote, substitution or correlate of energy was existence, existentia. In later modern European metaphysics, the category of energy is also absent, although in some teachings - for example, in Leibniz - the substituting principle of action or activity plays a significant role. The situation has not fundamentally changed in the modern period, although correlative principles, such as will, aspiration, existence, etc., have become much more important, and the very concept of energy has undergone deep thought and revision by Heidegger, who devoted a special course to interpreting Book IX of Aristotle's Metaphysics about him. As a result, as areas where energy appears explicitly and, moreover, in a central role, today, perhaps, only two non-philosophical areas can be named, which are a very paradoxical combination: hesychast theology and modern physics. As it turns out, the interpretation of energy in them has common features, which, in particular, include far-reaching differences from the energy of Aristotle. Much can be seen behind this unexpected closeness.

In the IX book of "Metaphysics" it is introduced in a single complex and the relationship with and, so that all three concepts form a ternary ontological structure:

This triad can be seen as the basic ontological structure of all European metaphysics; and the whole which it describes we shall call an event. The elements of the event are optically ordered, and in their order the energy acts as a middle, intermediate link. As a result, the ontological structure contains, mathematically speaking, a free parameter. In the "gap", the conceptual space between possibility and reality, energy can a priori be located anywhere - closer to the possibility, closer to reality, or at an equal distance from them; and each of these positions implies, generally speaking, its own ontology, a picture of reality. The first position sees in energy, in the element of activity, first of all, the initial effort of actualization: selection, selection and performance, proceeding from the boundless variety of possibilities, the sea of ​​virtual reality. The energy here is close to and therefore there is a dynamic principle. On the contrary, the second position sees in energy, first of all, the final element of realization: the achievement of some goal, form, state, which are optically pre-existing and only in fact not initially given. Here, the energy is close to being realized, and therefore there is a realizing, realizing the essence of the beginning.

As you know, it is this position that corresponds to the metaphysics of Aristotle. Now we cannot enter into its analysis, but we will single out only one, the main moment for us: the ratio of energy and essence. Serving the realization of the essence, the energy is thus subordinate to it, included in the orbit, in the discourse of the essence. However, this common property all Aristotelian categories: essence is the pinnacle of their entire system, and all categories are determined in one way or another through it, and all things borrow their participation in being from it; in other words, the entire philosophical speech of Aristotle can be considered as an essential discourse. Like any classic, the thought of the Stagirite cannot be exhausted by such a one-sided interpretation; but, taken in this interpretation, it turns out to be a useful methodological opposition, a "negative" for our constructions.

Understood as a purely essential discourse, Aristotle's metaphysics describes reality as a whole network of patterns: a system of antecedent forms, goals, entelechies, and essences. As is well known in the history of thought, the intuitions of Christian anthropology, as well as many other schools of thought, individualistic, voluntaristic, phenomenological, etc., are very different from such a picture of a totally regular reality, and they constantly prompted the search for philosophical alternatives - otherwise speaking, to the creation of non-essential, de-essentialized discourses. The most important example for us is the development of existential philosophy. Throughout the era of classical European metaphysics, the category of existentia was marginal and secondary; however, starting with Kierkegaard, it comes to the fore to become in our century one of the central concepts of ontology and even, in a certain sense, the leitmotif of the modern vision and perception of reality. The main stimulus for the nomination was precisely the departure from essentialism, since, starting with Aquinas, ekhistentia was firmly considered as the opposite of essentia. (At the same time, the oppressive dominance of essentialism that they wanted to overcome was associated, first of all, with the Hegelian system, which undoubtedly admits an essentialist reading, but, like Aristotle's metaphysics, is by no means completely covered by it.) This departure was carried out in several ways. , of which the most straightforwardly simplified was the postulate inversion of the usual relation (Sartre's thesis "existence precedes essence"), and the most well-founded - the analytic "Sein und Zeit", integrating essence into existence ("The essence of Dasein lies in its existence").

The concept of energy opens up another path to the construction of a non-essential philosophical discourse, and this path has a certain proximity to the path of existential philosophy. There is a deep connection between the concepts of energy and existence, which is revealed if we turn again to the ontological structure of the event. As you know, the primary meaning of both verbs, lat. existere and Greek. is: to act, to move outward, leaving, thereby, some initial place. In the context of ontology, this means that existence, concrete being, esse reale is conceived as a performance, advancement, proceeding from a certain basis, previous and abiding, from “what is always before” (Aristotle). Behind this is a binary ontological structure "Basic - Acting (existens, existentia)", obviously related and isomorphic to the structure "Possibility - Energy". Existential discourse, which refuses the primacy of essence over existence, thereby refuses to think of existence teleologically, as a performance towards a predetermined goal, a previous form, etc. And the concept of energy can be interpreted in exactly the same deessentialized way. We have already pointed out that the ternary structure of the event allows for a non-Aristotelian interpretation, in which energy moves away from entelechy and approaches possibility. In this case, the main element in the event becomes its center, the energy itself as such; while entelechy and all associated categories of the essential series, like goal, form, essence, are relegated to the background and are considered as subordinate energies, determined in relation to it. Becoming secondary, they may even be absent from the description of the event. The approach of energy to possibility is reflected in the fact that energy is no longer associated with the completion and completeness of action and movement, but rather with its beginning, the initiative, it is presented as the actual beginning of a certain movement or action, its “sprout” (in the sense of rather topology). than biology).

In this new interpretation, energy acquires autonomy from essence and becomes the generating principle of philosophical discourse. Now philosophical discourse on any topic must unfold, first of all, in terms of energy, as a follow-up of what happens to energy. So, if, according to Scheler, “philosophical anthropology studies the essential structure of man,” then we, in contrast, must set before anthropology the task of studying the energy structure of man, that is, the continuously changing set of diverse energies with which man is endowed at every moment. We call this changing set the energy image or energy projection of a person, and this concept becomes one of the main working tools of synergistic anthropology. In the emerging discourse of energy, reality loses its total essentialist determinism, and the properties of openness and freedom acquire a leading role. k, energy is now a dynamic beginning, it first of all initiates and maintains the dynamics of reality, and this dynamics is open and non-equilibrium in nature: in the sense that it is not closed in any system of goals and forms and is not compared to it, in general in other words, no entelechy, no predetermined ending.It is this discourse of dynamic and de-essentialized energy that corresponds to the modern physical worldview, corresponds to quantum physics and cosmology; in particular, in its quality of openness it is naturally associated with the model of the expanding universe. Moreover, a hypothesis may arise about the paradigm coincidence of this model in cosmology and the model of Theosis in (meta) anthropology: such a coincidence would obviously be nothing more than the identity of Macrocosm and Microcosm, expressed in the discourse of energy. Compared to existential discourse, the deessentialization achieved in the discourse of energy is more radical, since the categories of event and energy allow for greater distancing from essence. Existence, existence, even when it is not directly subordinated to essence, necessarily includes in its semantic structure some relation to it. But the event and energy can to a large extent be considered as “free beginnings”, standing in a different categorical series, for which the concretization of the connection with the essence is not mandatory. In addition, having the nature of action, existing exclusively in action, and not “by itself”, energy does not allow for substantiveization, hypostasis, and, in terms of its role in discourse, should be considered not as a subject, but as a predicate. Therefore, the discourse of energy is a specific “verbal” or “operational” discourse, the construction of which requires a change in attitudes, from substantiality to operationality. This further distances it from the usual, "nominal" essential discourse and ultimately allows us to consider the discourse of energy as an extreme limit in the movement of philosophical thought towards de-essentialization. One can see here a certain connection with the fact that it is this discourse that is adequate to the understanding of energy in the mystical anthropology of hesychasm and in modern physics: for all the dissimilarity of these areas, they are united by the fact that both of them are the extreme, limiting spheres of human experience, the internal accessible to man. and external reality.

Conclusion

In modern times, Russian thought is going through many stages of influence, mainly from the Western and especially German philosophy. They were fruitful, if they were not in dissonance with the fundamental features of the national mentality, but they activated it. Russian philosophizing reaches its highest tone when it senses in itself the powerful currents of ancient Russian wisdom, connected with Eastern Christian and European traditions.

all of the above is only a pale sketch, a rough scheme, a weak reflection of some directions of that spiritual wealth that is contained in Russian philosophy. Russian philosophy is a philosophy of suffering and insight, sacrificial service to the truth, different in its manifestations, difficult to interpret. It includes a variety of intentions: sacred and godless, mystical and rationalistic, totalitarian and anarchist, statist and liberal, traditionalist and innovative, Eurocentric and soil, dogmatic and heretical, constructive and destructive. But the most valuable thing in it is that which was created under the sign of eternity.

Bibliography

Gromov M.N. Eternal values ​​of Russian culture: to the interpretation of Russian philosophy. // Questions of Philosophy. 1994. No. 1.

8. Khoruzhy S.S. Hesychasm as a space of philosophy. // Questions of Philosophy.199

Khoruzhy S.S. Feat as an organon. Organization and hermeneutics of experience in the hesychast tradition. // Questions of Philosophy. 199

Chapter L Hesychasm as a socio-cultural phenomenon.

§1. Hesychasm as a subject of historical and cultural knowledge. S. 6

§2. Spiritual predecessors of Gregory Palamas. Socio-cultural prerequisites for the formation of hesychasm. His heyday. S. 33

§3. The main ideas of the hesychasts. S. 60

§4. Features of Russian hesychasm. S. 80

Chapter P. Hesychasm and Russian artistic culture.

§ 1. Aesthetics of hesychasm. S. 105

§2. Realization of hesychast ideas in the works of Theophan the Greek, Andrei

Rublev and Dionysius. S. 131

§3. Reception of hesychast ideas in Russian culture of the 17th-20th centuries. P.157

Recommended list of dissertations in the specialty "Theory and History of Culture", 24.00.01 VAK code

• Anthropology of hesychasm in the context of Byzantine culture 2000, candidate of philosophical sciences Klimkov, Oleg Stanislavovich

• Philosophy of hesychasm and the formation of archetypes of ancient Russian religious art: Esthete. analysis of the variant painting of the XIV-XVI centuries. 1998, candidate of philosophical sciences Chernysheva, Alexandra Nikolaevna

• Hesychasm and its influence on Byzantine and Russian painting of the XIV-XV centuries 2006, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences Filindash, Larisa Vasilievna

• The Ethics of Hesychasm in Old Russian Icon Painting 2002, candidate of philosophical sciences Zemtsov, Yuri Viktorovich

• The Problem of Man in Palamite Hesychasm: Historical and Philosophical Analysis 2006, Doctor of Philosophy Makarov, Dmitry Igorevich

Introduction to the thesis (part of the abstract) on the topic "Traditions of Hesychasm in Russian Medieval Culture"

The teaching of the hesychasts from the time of its appearance has firmly established itself as a classic page of Orthodox spiritual culture. The discovery of hesychasm has become the property of our era. Nowadays, one can observe a revival of interest in the mystical tradition, as evidenced by the appearance of a large amount of scientific and spiritual literature relating to this topic. The inexhaustible depth of this problem and its importance for modern man allows us to expect a sustained interest in hesychasm to continue to grow. deep levels perception and understanding of reality. Its study plays a significant role for philosophical anthropology, psychology, religion, cultural studies and for modern humanities in general. In accordance with this, we are making another attempt to study the various forms of inner experience that was acquired in the process of the development of civilization. This helps to comprehend the significant role of spiritual practices. In Russian religious and cultural studies, along with thoroughly developed sections devoted to the hesychast teaching and activities of hesychasts, there are also insufficiently studied topics that fully deserve to be the subject of special study. One of these topics is "The Traditions of Hesychasm in Russian Medieval Culture".

The relevance of the historical and philosophical consideration of this problem can be emphasized by the following circumstance: the question of the relationship between the Palaiologan Renaissance in Byzantium and the art of Theophan the Greek and St. Andrei Rublev in Rus' and to this day is the subject scientific research and scholarly disputes. Therefore, a comprehensive study of both art monuments and literary works of this time is necessary in order to understand their true meaning. We must realize the experience of "neopatristic synthesis", in the words of G.V. Florovsky, in relation to a specific area of ​​the hesychast tradition. Answering the questions of the surrounding reality, we must make an attempt to speculatively, and perhaps even spiritually, join the tradition in order to draw on the positive that was worked out by the Hesychast ascetics.

In the Soviet era, the study, and even more so the very existence of tradition, was complicated in Russia and concentrated mainly abroad. After a long break, hesychasm is reborn. Our primary task was to provide a comprehensive, systematic collection of data on the tradition in modern language: to enter into its world and its structure, to present its principles, concepts, attitudes, to reveal its problems, to indicate, as completely as possible, the corpus of primary sources and other materials.

The problem of the influence of hesychasm on Russian icon painting of the 11th-17th centuries. gave rise to a large number of disagreements and disputes, both among philosophers and among art historians. This topic is very multifaceted. It affects such areas of scientific thought as philosophy, art, history, and, of course, is directly related to theology. This, in fact, determines the diversity of approaches to this problem - it is considered differently by ecclesiastical and secular authors, and accents are placed in different places.

As for our problem, we cannot come to unambiguous indisputable conclusions due to various reasons, such as, for example, the difference in approaches - secular and religious, the difference in the perception of works of art, their controversial dating, belonging to the brush of one or another author, inconsistency the patristic tradition itself and the works of the hesychasts. The main purpose of this work is the cultural and philosophical study of the phenomenon of hesychasm in the broad cultural context of that time in relation to the current problems of modern cultural studies and philosophical anthropology.

Achievement of the main goal of the study unfolds by setting and solving a series of the following tasks: 1. Consideration of the hesychast tradition as a subject of historical and cultural knowledge; 2. The study of the original creations of theorists and practitioners of the hesychast tradition, created during its thousand-year existence; 3. Comparative analysis of the philosophical and theological discussion of hesychasts and their opponents; 4. Restoration of the existential and socio-cultural context of these views; 5. Determining the place of the hesychast tradition in the artistic culture of medieval Rus'. 6. Substantiation of the relevance of hesychast views for modern cultural studies and philosophical anthropology.

Methodologically, the dissertation study of hesychasm in the context of Russian culture is connected with an attempt at a hermeneutic reconstruction and generalization of the spiritual and theoretical experience of Orthodox hesychasm based on an analysis of the texts of its main representatives, primarily St. Gregory Palamas, as well as a comprehensive analysis of the cultural situation of the era under study and understanding the problems of interpenetration of the main ideas of the hesychasm doctrine and the cultural and historical environment surrounding it.

The novelty of the work follows from the formulation and solution of problems related to the explication of the views of hesychasm in the context of its cultural environment in relation to the current topics of modern philosophical thought, which opens up new perspectives in the study of deep existential experiences of the human person in their absolute and cultural aspects.

The theoretical significance of the proposed work is related to its relation to the category of fundamental issues of religious and philosophical anthropology, theology and cultural studies. The disclosure of the anthropological model of late Byzantine hesychasm in all its cultural significance contributes to a deeper understanding of the problems posed in the system of modern philosophical and theological knowledge about the human personality. The dissertation materials can be used in research on medieval and modern philosophy of culture, as well as in lectures and practical classes in cultural studies, world artistic culture, and national history.

The following provisions are put forward for defense:

1. In modern science, the history of the study of hesychasm is considered as a multifaceted scientific phenomenon.

2. The socio-political and cultural situation in Byzantium in the XNUMXth centuries is considered, in the context of which the tradition of hesychasm takes place; the analysis of the teachings of hesychasts and their opponents is carried out, including the study of the anthropological, ontological and epistemological views of the representatives of hesychasm, the philosophical and theological views of the head of the hesychasts - St. Gregory Palamas and his ideological opponents.

The main ideas of hesychasm are: the view of man as the image and likeness of God, within which the issue of creativity is raised and resolved; the practice of asceticism as a means of achieving theosis (deification) - the ultimate destination of the human personality; the doctrine of psychophysical unity, suggesting the relationship and complementarity of the body and soul.

3. Modern reconstruction of Hesykhasgian views includes: analysis and rethinking of the spiritual experience of the past, comparing it with the achievements of modern philosophy.

The dissertation consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, notes and a list of references.

Dissertation conclusion on the topic "Theory and history of culture", Nadelyaeva, Ekaterina Pavlovna

Conclusion.

The history of the study of hesychasm in classical and modern literature is seen as a process of cognition of the intellectual and spiritual experience of ascetics. Hesychasm appears before us as a multifaceted cultural phenomenon.

The mystical-ascetic tradition developed in the 1U-U1 centuries. We can consider the first hesychasts to be the Palestinian and Syrian anchorites. Christian thinkers since Origen have used Plato's philosophy to talk about Christ. There was a process of segregation and

407 P.A. Florensky. A Pillar and ground of truth. From 310. at the same time, the convergence of Platonic philosophy and Christian theology, which ended with the absorption of Platonism by Christianity.

Forerunners of St. Gregory Palamas, who systematized and finally formulated the main ideas of the hesychasts, one can undoubtedly consider such ascetics as Origen and Evagrius (despite their condemnation by the official church), as well as Anthony the Great, Macarius of Egypt, the Cappadocian Fathers, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, John of the Ladder , Isaac the Syrian, Gregory of Sinai, Simeon the New Theologian. Based on personal spiritual experience, in their works they touched upon such aspects of mystical practice as cleansing the heart - the center of a person's spiritual life; "reduction" of the mind in the heart; unceasing prayer; vision of the uncreated Tabor Light and "deification". The victory of St. Gregory Palamas, who defended the position of the uncreated nature of the Light of Tabor, in a dispute with Barlaam of Calabria, placed Gregory among the most significant apologists for Orthodoxy and brought him fame as a teacher of hesychasm.

The era of the XIII-beginning of the XV centuries. is the final stage in the cultural aspect and an important milestone in the life of the Byzantine Empire. This is the heyday of hesychasm, which then embraced the entire Orthodox East. The mysticism of hesychasm, which included continuous prayer and contemplation of the uncreated light, had a great impact on the art of Byzantium in the 14th century and contributed to its flourishing. Already representatives of early Christianity, the holy fathers of the church, paid a lot of attention to the problem of creativity, considering artistic creativity as similar to divine creativity, and God was often called the Artist. The existential nature of man is the need for creativity, the active ability to rebuild the universe, the formation of the sphere of spiritual values.

St. Gregory Palamas developed the patristic teaching about God the Creator. Along with this, this issue became the most important component of his anthropology, in which the doctrine of man merged with the doctrine of God. Palamas's point of view is based on the principles of the patristic concept of "synergy" - the interaction of divine grace and human free will

The doctrine of divine energies can be considered the doctrine of icons, since the dogma of icon veneration says that an artist can translate the result of divine action in a person into the language of forms, lines, colors. In the doctrine of the Light of Tabor, we are talking about the deification of a person. This intersects with the concept of the deification of an image Iconicity or, in a slightly different way, the iconicity of creation is the realization of God's plan for the world and for man. According to the holy fathers, asceticism is also creativity, but creativity of the highest, higher order It brings positive transforming energy into the world. The peculiarity of mystical-ascetic creativity lies in the fact that its subject and object coincide. Therefore, the assimilation occurs here the most profound. According to the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, the lost likeness of God is achieved by the action of divine grace and our breakthrough to it, in synergy, that is, in creativity. In the hesychast tradition, a huge role is assigned to the historical incarnation, which made the god-likeness of man real.

The teachings of Palamas gave Byzantine, and after them Russian theologians, a “theoretical” basis for resolving the question of what can and cannot be depicted on icons. In a mystical sense, an icon is the revelation and manifestation of the inner energy and love of the one who is depicted on it, and, in part, of the one who created it. The icon is a means of spiritual communication for all who aspire to God, it is a sincere dialogue, a mystery that is comprehended through tireless prayer and inner contemplation. It is worth noting that during the iconoclastic disputes, it was the ascetic mystics who were the most persistent apologists for icons. Theological debates of the 19th-17th centuries. demonstrated that art has a duty to promote faith.

Russian culture is one of the most significant types of medieval culture, and an important factor is that it is based on the Byzantine tradition. Using the material of patristic literature, we made an attempt to reveal the degree of influence of the hesychast worldview on the development of Russian artistic culture. Russian hesychasts can rightfully be called St. Sergius of Radonezh and Nil of Sorsk. Sergius of Radonezh revived contemplative monasticism in Rus'. He was interested in the teachings of Gregory Palamas on the common grace of the Holy Trinity. But the teaching of the hesychasts became only one of the initial provisions of the theology of St. Sergius. The sphere of his personal theological comprehension of the mystery of the Holy Trinity is Christian morality in its correlation with the foundations of faith.

Based on the study of the writings of the holy fathers, Nil Sorsky developed in detail the system of skete residence and built a monastery, the way of life of which corresponded to the state of hesychast silence and contemplation.

Hesychast ideas were embodied in icon painting by such famous icon painters as Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev, and, in a certain sense, Dionysius. The images of Theophanes the Greek are characterized by an amazing inner concentration, detachment, isolation and refined psychologism. The ascetic appears before God one on one. The master's palette is restrained - there are only two colors - ocher and white, the general color scheme is ascetically monochrome - dark, brown. This is indeed reminiscent of the teachings of the hesychasts. On many icons there are flashes of light - divine energies. The master creates an image filled with divine joy, which is comprehended through mystical revelations.

The work of Andrei Rublev is distinguished by high humanism, interest in man, in his inner world. As monk Andrei Rublev of the Trinity Lavra, he obviously took part in those speculative conversations that were conducted by the followers of St. Sergius. And the master should have known that the image of the Trinity was interpreted by Byzantine theologians not only as an image of a triune deity and a prototype of the Eucharist, but also as a symbol of faith, hope and love. Rublyov's "Trinity" radiates light, calmness, concentration. The light that comes into the world is the love that transforms the world.

Andrei Rublev's angels seem to us to be incorporeal sublime beings. But the spiritual does not prevail over the physical, they form a single whole. Here, Rublev's vision is precisely within the framework of Palamas's anthropological views. Rublev's work visually confirms the central position of hesychasm about the unknowability of the essence of God, which is given to man in divine energies. He managed to embody the image of God directly, as a material reality.

Dionysius was rather a hesychast more by tradition than by the laws of his creativity. In his art, various ideological trends of his time are intertwined in a very peculiar way. But he, like Andrei Rublev, sought to convey in his work the power of wisdom, kindness, humility. All this to some extent brings him closer to Rublev, who worked directly under the influence of hesychasm Dionysius, but worked on orders from monasteries that continued the Sergius tradition, and was also well acquainted with famous ascetics. Deep enlightened wisdom, the power of the divine Logos, pervade Ferapontov's paintings. I recall the idea of ​​Sophia, which, in our opinion, was fully reflected in the work of Dionysius.

The tradition of hesychasm continues to live today, based on the vast experience of Christian ascetics, consisting of various approaches, practices, including the main aspects of human activity. Hesychast anthropology is subject to a single concept. In recent decades, new approaches to the ancient tradition have been formed, attempts have been made to include it in the modern spiritual, cultural and scientific context, which should help modern man to comprehend the existing reality and search for new resources in his intellectual and spiritual nature. Undoubtedly, the hesychast tradition acquired the role of a nourishing source of spiritual life, capable of creating its new forms. To remain alive and active in the modern world, it must be comprehended and felt in detail, and this dissertation should serve as an approximation to this goal.

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Hesychasm as the core of Orthodox spirituality

Introduction 2

1. Genesis of Russian philosophical thought 3

2. Stages of development of the hesychast tradition 9

3. Philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of "hesychasm" 13

4. Meeting ancient tradition with modern thinking 19

reality 24

Conclusion 28

References 30

Introduction

The tradition of hesychasm, or sacred silence, recognized as the quintessence of the Orthodox religious type and style, created and accumulated a set of observations, approaches, and practices covering the most important aspects of nature and human activity. This is a kind of interdisciplinary knowledge about a person, which is reduced to a strict unity and integrity: it is everywhere subject to a single view of a person, a single concept of consciousness and a single task, which is to implement a certain anthropological strategy. In typological and historical and cultural aspects, the phenomenon of Orthodox hesychasm is among the world traditions of spiritual practice, mystical or mystical ascetic schools with a detailed canon and centuries-old history, such as yoga, Zen, Taoism, Sufism. All these traditions have long been the subject of close study and even mass interest, since their undoubted value has been discovered both for the sciences of man and, in a broader sense, for modern spiritual searches. In recent decades, a new reception of ancient traditions has developed, both in scientific and mass consciousness; they have been integrated into today's spiritual, cultural and scientific context. Undoubtedly, this process had its negative sides, costs; it was far from complete without elements of reduction, vulgarization, market exploitation of ancient wisdom. And yet, in its essence, it should be recognized as necessary and fruitful. In the experience of ancient schools, modern man opens up new ways of understanding reality and new resources in his own nature.

No similar process took place with the hesychast tradition, but still partial signs, its individual elements are present, their number is growing, and in one form or another the process will probably be inevitable. But the situation here is very different. The discovery of Eastern traditions by the modern West meant their perception and assimilation in a culture that was previously alien and unfamiliar to them. In contrast, turning to the legacy of hesychasm in modern Russia means by no means the discovery of an exotic novelty, but the revival of an important component in the life of Orthodoxy, an active religion, organically connected with the entire fate of the country. Therefore, a new reception of the hesychasm tradition must begin with seeing and understanding the tradition in its true essence, religious and mystical, and in its true place, in the core of the Orthodox Church.

1. The Genesis of Russian Philosophical Thought

The domestic cultural layer in material and spiritual terms is more than a thousand years old, and what happens every time on its surface can be fundamentally explained not only by analyzing the action of momentary factors, but also by all means taking into account all previous development.

To understand the essence of the Russian state and imperial consciousness, it is necessary to trace its genesis and evolution from its origins to the present. In the XI century. Metropolitan Hilarion, in his “Sermon on Law and Grace”, glorifying the Baptist of Rus', the Great Kiev Prince Vladimir, compares him with the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who established Christianity as the official ideology and founded Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Vladimir is glorified both as an educator equal to the apostles and as a great ruler who conquered many tribes. So even in the pre-Mongolian period, the foundations of the political self-consciousness of Rus' were laid as a great state, consecrated by the church and confident in its power among other powers.

After the Mongol invasion and the ruin of Kyiv, the role of the center of East Slavic statehood gradually passes to Moscow. The gradually maturing idea of ​​a special mission for the new capital of Rus' led to the appearance at the beginning of the 16th century. doctrine "Moscow - the Third Rome", according to which two Romes fell, Moscow - the third, and the fourth - not to be.

The substantiation of this doctrine went in different directions, up to the composition of legendary genealogies. Ivan the Terrible considered himself a descendant of the Roman emperor Augustus, he was the first to be married as a king (the abbreviated name of the title "Caesar") according to a special rank compiled by Metropolitan Macarius. The residence of the rulers of Russia - the Moscow Kremlin, consciously and purposefully with the help of Italian architects, was by that time turned into a majestic sovereign ensemble, standing on one of the seven hills, like the Roman Capitol.

When the new northern capital of the Russian state was founded, it was conceived as the city of St. Peter, competing with the Roman throne, the residence of the pope, whose universal power mystically continues the omnipotence of the Roman emperors, who were not only supreme rulers, but also supreme pontiffs. This Caesar-Papist combination of state and sacred power then passed to Byzantium and Russia. Peter I, having abolished the patriarchate, made the church an appendage of the state machine, thereby strengthening the empire, but weakening the authority of the church.

In the 19th century The Russian Empire reached the maximum of territorial annexations, including Poland, Finland, Alaska. As one of the Western historians wittily put it, it grew out of a small Moscow principality, which, for several centuries, waging exceptionally just wars only for its independence, conquered 1/6 of the world's land.

The expansion of Russia to the East was part of a pan-European expansion that spread throughout the world. In some respects, the exploration of the Wild West in North America resembles the exploration of the Wild East in Eurasia; therefore, in the politics, traditions, mentality of Americans and Russians, elements of similarity can be caught. However, unlike the United States, our country developed as an imperial state. One of his hidden desires was the idea of ​​establishing himself on the Bosphorus and creating some kind of Byzantine state under the protectorate of the Russian tsars. Even the leader of the Cadets, P. Milyukov, dreamed of erecting an Orthodox cross on the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople.

On the ruins of the tsarist empire, a new super-empire arose - the USSR, on the coat of arms of which the entire globe was depicted under the shadow of a star, hammer and sickle. Moscow, according to N. Berdyaev, continuing the tradition of the Third Rome, has become the capital of the Third International, as an effective tool in achieving world domination through inspiring world revolution. Russia has become the main subject and the main victim of this satanic plan. The moderate claims of old Russia were replaced by the exorbitant hegemonic aspirations of a new political colossus, which subsequently could not bear its own weight.

The entire thousand-year-old national history is permeated by the confrontation and at the same time a bizarre interweaving of two fundamental ideals - the political, embodied in the concept of "Moscow - the Third Rome", and the sacred, reflected in the image of Holy Rus'. The cruelty of political institutions, barbaric customs, contempt for the value of an individual human life, lack of rights - on one extreme and refined spiritual culture, magnificent works of architecture, painting, music, literature, plastic arts, mercy, compassion for the humiliated and offended - on the other.

This duality, the ambivalence of reality, was deeply felt by many Russian people, starting with the medieval thinker Daniil Zatochnik, who complained about his poverty, and Archpriest Avvakum, who was burned alive, to the countless host of Russian new martyrs of the 20th century. Observant foreigners Herberstein, Contarini, Chancellor were struck by the contrasts they saw in Rus'. A similar leitmotif emerges in the book of one of the authoritative representatives of Western Russians, James Billington, “The Icon and the Axe”.

However, harsh, contrasting, unfavorable conditions for a comfortable life tempered people, educating (which was also noted by external observers) staunch warriors, patient citizens, super-hardy inhabitants of a vast empire, in the vastness of which entire nations could be lost. Not a mild coastal, but a sharp continental climate (both in the natural and social sense) developed an appropriate stereotype of behavior. For a long time in Russia, circumstances have contributed to the emergence of philosophers not of an armchair type, calmly and measuredly pondering the problems of being and consciousness in a cozy library, but ascetics, martyrs, confessors of an idea, who sacrificed not only comfort and career for the sake of truth, but often freedom and even life, what the monastic imprisonment of Maxim Grek, the exile of Radishchev and Herzen, the stay in hard labor of Dostoevsky, the death in Stalin's camps of Florensky and Shpet remind us of. The severe trials of the soul and the flesh gave the spirit a deeply suffered existential experience, unattainable in a comfortable environment. On the edge of the abyss, on the verge of life and death, in the face of eternity, completely different thoughts come up than at the desk.

Rus' in geopolitical terms has long been a barrier, foreground, buffer zone of Europe in the eastern direction, like Spain in the south, so such distant and different countries have something in common in history, politics, and traditions. The development of Russian culture took place in different, often extreme conditions of a border situation (in the direct and existential sense of this expression). She could not focus on creating a well-groomed, comfortable, burgher environment, because it was constantly being destroyed. Traces of endless wars, upheavals, arbitrariness of the authorities, the incompleteness of the next construction or perestroika are clearly visible on her long-suffering body. This unsettled, disorganized, too spacious physical landscape of Russia produces a corresponding intellectual and mental landscape, where you can find anything but regularity, order, and completeness of the work begun. But the hope for a miracle, an extraordinary experiment, a fantastic project is growing.

Chapter 3 Hesychasm in Rus' in the XIV-XV centuries.

Byzantine origins

Period XIII - the first half of the XV century. represents the final and culturally particularly significant stage in the life of the Byzantine state. After the defeat of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204, the leadership of the state was concentrated in the city of Nicaea. The spiritual forces of the nation, philosophers, theologians, icon painters are also concentrated here, the Academy is being created, where theological problems are discussed with unprecedented intensity, including those related to the concepts of the incarnation of a deity and the outflow of grace, with the nature of “divine energies”. This spiritual upsurge, usually referred to as the Palaiologan revival, lasted after the return of the Byzantine government to Constantinople in 1261, and later, until the fall of Byzantium under the blows of the Turks in 1453. The process took place against the background of the growing crisis of the Byzantine state and the general consciousness of its inevitability death, which raised a particularly acute question about the future fate of the country and the orientation of its cultural life - towards the Roman Catholic West or the Orthodox East. The conflict of these two orientations, on the one hand, constituted the main content of theological reflection, on the other hand, determined approaches to the formulation and solution of problems rethought in Christianity, but rooted in the heritage of ancient philosophical classics and Neoplatonism and briefly described above.

In Byzantium, from time immemorial it was believed that it was the successor and continuer of the ancient world, based in the state-political sphere on the experience of Ancient Rome, and in the sphere of science and abstract knowledge - on the experience of Greek philosophy; However, only the Christian dogma has always been recognized as the basis of the religious life of the state. “We do not prevent anyone from getting acquainted with secular education, if he so desires, unless he has just accepted monastic life, - wrote one of the most respected theologians of that era, Gregory Palamas. -But we do not advise anyone to indulge in it to the end and completely forbid expecting from it any kind of accuracy in the knowledge of the Divine; for it is impossible to receive from her any true doctrine of God.” (Gregory Palamas. Protection of the holy hesychasts. Triad one). In real life, the follower

It was impossible to carry out this division again. In the atmosphere of the Palaiologan renaissance and the intellectual upsurge associated with it, church leaders sometimes acted fully armed philosophical knowledge, and philosophers supplied arguments for theological disputes. The conflict between supporters of the Western Catholic orientation and supporters of the Eastern Orthodox orthodoxy could take - and took - arbitrarily insignificant forms, but the range of issues that were discussed and needed to be resolved was general.

By the XIII-XV centuries. in Byzantium, these two questions prevailed over the others - the question of the relationship between the essence of God and His presence in the world, as well as the question of the religious and aesthetic meaning of icons. In their original theoretical formulation and in specific ways of solution, both one and the other showed an obvious connection with the Neoplatonic tradition.

In the course of its spiritual history, Byzantium developed a different understanding of the essence of Christian doctrine than the Western Church. Behind numerous private differences, liturgical and canonical, a fundamental and fundamental difference loomed. For all Christians, God is transcendent, but manifests itself outside, that is, in the life of the world. For Catholics, at the same time, such manifestations of God are given in actions, in the natural perfection of the world, in the feeling of compunction that this perfection evokes in the soul of the believer, i.e., they are something that is caused by the essence of God, but by its nature is different from this essence. . Therefore, Catholic theologians are so fond of likening God's influence on the world and on believers to the imposition of a seal: all the features of the seal are preserved in the imprint, if the imprint is especially good, then down to the smallest, but even the most perfect imprint does not become and can never become a seal. It is made of a different material, it is of a different nature and belongs to a different being. philosophical problem relations between the transcendent essence of God and His appearance in the world, the stages of the descent of grace are not so much removed here as ignored, and with it the entire Neoplatonic component of the ancient heritage in Christianity. In a rethought form, as part of a different system, it forms the main source of the main direction of Byzantine Orthodoxy in the 13th-15th centuries. - the so-called hesychasm.

After many centuries of existence, discussion and comprehension of the doctrine of hesychasm, its main content emerges as follows: the essence of God manifests itself in the simultaneous

His being - both in the unknowable otherworldly, and in turning outward, which is the Divine energy. Energy, being different from the otherworldly unknowable essence, at the same time is inseparable from it, and in each of its manifestations there is the whole God, one and indivisible; God's self-realization outside is expressed as in His direct entry into real story humanity through its consubstantial Son, and in the fact that this hypostasis of God, entering into history, has the character of a Logos, i.e., it is finite, self-finished, historically concrete, and represents a meaningful form in the Platonic and Aristotelian sense of the word. The constant realization of God outside, in His energies, makes especially significant (more significant than in Catholicism) the third hypostasis of the deity - the Holy Spirit, the outpouring, energetic, dynamic principle of God. “If we turn to the dogmatic question that divided East and West, to the question of the procession of the Holy Spirit, then we can’t speak of it as an accidental phenomenon in the history of the Church as such. From a religious point of view, he is the only real reason for the linkage of those factors that led to the division. (Lososii V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. M., 1991. S. 13); the exit of God in Spirit and Energy from his transcendence, His entry into the world make it fundamentally possible for a person to meet God, to know the unknowable God in the mystical and vital act of merging with His essence; the same constant presence of the essence of God in the world in the form of His Spirit and Energy makes the self-realization of God in the world, as well as meeting with Him and knowing Him, a creative act, the result of spiritual tension, which takes on a form that cannot but be partaker of God as the highest beauty , . e. not be aesthetic; most adequately, all this teaching is expressed in the icon - this, according to Dionysius the Areopagus, "the visible invisible." The breakthrough to God is realized in the icon, as it were, from two sides - in the act of perception and in the act of creation, which have a common basis.

To perception:“For the sake of us, incarnate, create an icon for love for Him and through it remember Him, through it worship Him, through it raise your mind to the worshiped body of the Savior, sitting in glory at the right hand of the Father in heaven. Create icons of saints in the same way<… >and worship them not as gods - which is forbidden, but as evidence of your fellowship with them in love for them and honoring them, raising your mind to them through their icons " (Gregory Palamas. Decalogue on Christian

conposition. Cit. By: Uspensky L.A. Theology icons of the Orthodox Church. Paris, 1989). “In veneration of the image and in understanding its basis and content, Palamas expresses entirely the traditional Orthodox teaching; but this content, in the context of his theology, acquires a sound characteristic of the pneumatological period. The Incarnation serves for him, as it were, as a starting point for pointing to its fruits: the glory of the Divine, revealed in the human body of God the Word. The offended flesh of Christ has received and communicates (that is, expresses, transmits) the eternal glory of the Godhead. It is this flesh that is depicted on icons and worshiped to the extent that it reveals the divinity of Christ. (Uspensky L.A. Decree. op. S. 198).

To creation:“The icon is painted in the light, and this, as I will try to find out, expresses the whole ontology of icon painting. Light, if it most closely matches the iconic tradition, is gilded, that is, it is precisely light, pure light, not color. In other words, all images arise in a sea of ​​golden grace, bathed in streams of divine light; it is he who is the space of true reality<…>And on the icon, when its scheme is abstractly outlined or, more precisely, its scheme is intended, the process of incarnation begins with the gilding of light. The icon begins with the gold of creative grace, and it ends with the gold of grace. The scripture of the icon - this visual ontology - repeats the main steps of divine creativity, from nothing, absolute nothing, to New Jerusalem, the holy creature<…>When the first concreteness appeared on the future icon - the first in dignity and chronologically golden color, then the white silhouettes of the icon image also receive the first degree of concreteness; hitherto they have been only abstract possibilities of being, not potencies in the Aristotelian sense, but only logical schemes, non-existence in the exact sense of the word (that is, nt | eivay).

Western rationalism imagines to derive from this nothing - something and everything; but the ontology of the East thinks differently about it: ex nihilo nihil, and something is created only by Being. The golden light of super-qualitative being, surrounding future silhouettes, manifests them and enables nothing abstract to pass into something concrete, to become a potency.<…>Technically speaking, it is a matter of filling the internal contour spaces with paint so that instead of abstract white, a concrete or, more precisely, colorful silhouette begins to be concrete ” (Florensky P.A. Iconostasis // Philosophy of Russian religious art of the 16th-20th centuries: Anthology. M., 1993. S. 272-273).

The difference between Eastern Christianity and Western Catholic Christianity lies, in particular, in the fact that the latter is striking in its “this-worldliness”, total absence taste for philosophical analysis and, accordingly, the lack of connections with the Neoplatonic tradition of ancient Greek philosophy. It is important, however, that within the Eastern Church this tradition not only exists and plays a primary role, but is also radically rethought. Hesychasm itself, which is successive in relation to it, is, in turn, internally divisible, and its Russian version is significantly different from the Byzantine one. This difference concerns, first of all, two points: the center of religious culture and the rethinking of the ancient heritage is shifting from the sphere of literature and philosophical theology to the sphere of fine arts and, first of all, icon painting; hesychia becomes of philosophical system form of personal behavior and life feat. “If Byzantium theologised primarily in words, then Russia theologised predominantly in images. Within the limits of the artistic language, it was Russia that was given the opportunity to reveal the depth of the content of the icon, the highest degree of its spirituality. (Uspensky L.L. Decree. op. pp. 222-223).

Iconography of the 15th century and "Trinity" Rublev

A specific Russian understanding of the hesychast doctrine of the icon image is evident, in addition to the icon-painting works by such masters as Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev, Dionysius and others, also from the theoretical exposition of the Russian theology of the icon in the “Message to the Icon Painter” and in the adjoining three “Words” about veneration of holy icons (late 15th - early 16th century). Their authorship is traditionally attributed to Joseph Volotsky, although significant passages of the text coincide literally with one of the works of Nil Sorsky; in addition, according to L.A. Uspensky, the second and third "Lay" belong to different authors. In many respects, the work of Maxim the Greek “On Holy Icons”, written a little later, is devoted to the same topic. Before us, therefore, is not so much an expression of the views of an individual author, but, despite many differences, a relatively holistic doctrine of icon painting, characteristic of Rus' not only in the period of hesychasm, but also in the next era.

The first thing that attracts attention both in these texts and in the icon-painting practice summarized in them is the central position of the main Hesychast image - the Trinity, and especially important

in this context, the episode of the New Testament - the Transfiguration. The second “Word” begins with the theme of the Trinity, the third “Word” is entirely devoted to it, it is mentioned in the “Message” itself and in the very first chapter of Maxim the Greek, the famous icon of Andrei Rublev is also dedicated to her; one of the most significant works of Theophanes the Greek is the Transfiguration. The central and absolutely dominant position of these themes is a feature of Russian hesychasm of the XIV-XV centuries, not represented to such an extent in Byzantine hesychasm.

The second feature of Russian hesychasm XIV-XVbb., which distinguishes it from Byzantine hesychasm, is the understanding of icon painting as life-building. If the essence and meaning of the icon is in the insight of the prototype in all its spirituality and holiness, then the contemplation of the icon, the worship of it and, even more so, its creation are not artistic acts, but existential, moral and life-building. “They are wonderful and the notorious icon painters, Daniel and his disciple Andrei, and many others are the same, and they have a bit of virtue and a bit of diligence about fasting and monastic life, as if they were worthy of divine grace, but always uplift the mind and thought to to the immaterial and divine light, but always raise the sensual eye to still from the material vaps in the written image of the lord of Christ and His Most Pure Mother of God and all the saints ”(Rev. / Great Menaion of the Honor of Metropolitan Macarius September, days 1 - 15. St. Petersburg, 1868. Quoted from: Uspensky L.A. Decree. op. pp. 212-213). The same idea is hardly more clearly and expressively indicated by Maxim the Greek in his essay “On Holy Icons” (ch. 2): But again, if someone has a spiritual life to live, but cannot beautifully imagine holy icons, do not command such people to write holy icons. But let him eat other needlework, he wants it.

The peak and the most complete embodiment of Russian hesychasm and Russian icon painting of the XIV-XV centuries. is "Trinity" by Andrei Rublev. The root position of hesychasm - God in his essence is not only transcendent, but also exists alive and awake, for he is given to us entirely in his energies - could be proved and developed philosophically and theologically, in the sphere of thought and word, which was done in Byzantium, but to imagine God given in exterior, plastically, to see His image and experience Him directly, as a material reality, would seem to be absolutely and completely impossible. It was beyond the power of even the apostles,

who at the moment of the Transfiguration were burdened with sleep, and then they saw only a cloud and only heard a voice emanating from it. This impossible problem is solved in Rublev's Trinity.

The divided unity of the three hypostases of the deity is, in principle, indescribable, for, as the founders of the Hesychast doctrine said, it "exceeds any kind of knowledge." Accordingly, Rublev took as a plot not this indescribable unity as such, but one of the episodes of the Old Testament - the visit of Abraham by the Lord, who was accompanied by two angels (in the Bible they are called men), at the oak forest of Mamre (Genesis 18: 1-19). The Christian spectator, however, understands not so much through historical details (thrones, walking sticks that have become sacred wands), but religious knowledge that in front of him are not Old Testament faces, but images of the Trinity. These images are undeniably recognizable, although they are not identical to the plot persons of the biblical story, and, rationally speaking, they should have been “read” here, as it were, and not they, but for everyone who carries the image of the Trinity, it is they, not containing into the "historical" form of the Old Testament characters, shine through them and visibly replace them. The miracle lies in the fact that the indescribable is not depicted here - and at the same time it is depicted, for it is given with all clarity to inner knowledge, which means that inner vision and experience.

The described approach to the theme of the "Trinity" is continued and deepened in the interpretation of the motif of the sacred meal. In the Old Testament, it is presented vividly and in detail: “And Abraham hurried to the tent to Sarah, and said: quickly knead three sats of the best flour, and make unleavened bread. And Abraham ran to the flock, and took a tender and good calf, and gave it to the boy, and he hastened to prepare it. And he took butter and milk, and a calf cooked, and set it before them (that is, before the Lord and both angels. - G.K); and he stood beside them under a tree. And they ate” (Genesis 18:6-8). In Byzantine iconography, it was precisely this side of the biblical story that was most often given special attention - the table was depicted with all the details, plentiful dishes placed on it, Abraham with his family and household, reverently looking at the sacred meal. In Rublev, three people sit around a table given in reverse perspective and, in particular, therefore, more reminiscent of not a table, but an altar. The altar table is empty, and only in the middle of it is the sacrificial bowl with the slain lamb. Before the viewer is again the Old Testament plot, well known to him and unfolding in his memory on the basis of associations that arise in connection with

depicted: God's prediction to Sarah about the miraculous appearance of her son, the birth of Isaac and - one of the most stunning scenes in the Bible - the sacrifice of Isaac to the Lord. And again, the inconceivable is read through the depicted: the lamb - the sacrifice - the salvation of the world through suffering, death and resurrection, given not as a visible, specific plot, but as an experience, communion with the divine essence - deification.

Art historians have revealed in detail and substantiated which person of the Trinity corresponds to each figure on Rublev's icon: God the Father in the center, God the Son to his right (and to the left of the viewer), God the Holy Spirit in the right part of the icon; both facial expressions and the meaning of the corresponding gestures were analyzed in detail (see, in particular: Andrey Rublev's Trinity: An Anthology / Compiled by G. Vzdornov. M., 1989. P. 126-128). It is no less important, however, to ponder and feel into the unity of the whole that reigns in the icon. And in this sense, the image of the Trinity as three separate hypostases, which at the same time are an inseparable unity, developed so deeply and in detail in Byzantine theology, is pictorially indescribable. It is possible to depict, as in Rublev, only three separate persons of the Trinity, but then the transfer of their unity, outside of which they do not exist, becomes an independent task of ontological importance, the solution of which is given by means of representation, but in such a way that it goes far beyond them. It begins with the figure of perfect unity and supreme harmony - the circle; the composition of the icon is subordinate to it and all the characters are inscribed in it. The circular line covering the entire image is repeated in the poses of the figures - they not only bowed their heads as a sign of mournful and bright humility before divine predestination, but also bowed to each other, united in love, harmony and understanding of what is happening and the future. Their communication is quite real and obvious, although their mouths are closed. Purely hesychast devotion to silence as a condition for a perfect religious state gives rise to the dominant image in the icon of silent conversation, and through it the highest trinity Council - Concord.

Rublev's work in general and his "Trinity" in particular were, as it were, rediscovered at the turn of the 20th century. and since then they have caused and are causing more and more interest and admiration, an increasing number of reviews, observations and scientific analyzes. Among them, attention is drawn to the general feeling of a real and obvious connection between these works and the art of classical Greece. This feeling is truly universal. About him pi-

jester all researchers - from L. and V. Uspensky, who started work in the first years of the century, to M.V. Alpatov (1967), from P. Muratov (1913) to religious thinkers, whose reviews were collected quite recently, in 1989 (See G. Vzdornov’s reader mentioned above, and for an earlier period review: Danilova I.E. Andrei Rublev in Russian and foreign art history literature//Andrey Rublev and his era. M., 1971. S. 17-61). hallmark of these reviews, in addition to their universality, is in most cases their non-technical, not specifically art history, but rather an impressionistic and general cultural character. Where attempts are made to trace this connection at the level of reception and specific analogies, the result may be more or less convincing, but usually it does not explicitly explain the historical-cultural and philosophical essence phenomena. Before us is one of the great and so often hidden highways of spiritual interaction, which lie in the centuries-old depths of the cultural and historical existence of peoples and can rarely be reduced to a purely rational explanation.

The most direct associations of the "Trinity" evoked and evokes with the reliefs on the tombstones of the Greek stelae of the classical period. The same deep calmness, the same dissolved and enlightened sorrow, the same extreme simplicity and restraint of expressive means, a special harmonic beauty. The attitude behind these reliefs and that gave rise to them is quite obvious. The social contradictions that tore apart the Greek policy could be arbitrarily sharp, but antique man carried, in addition, the mythologized unity of his world, where everyday life, an idealized image of civil society, mythological tradition and the whole structure of world life merged and penetrated into each other. This ideal and at the same time directly known unity to each Hellenic was reflected in the highest manifestations of the Hellenic spirit - in the tragedies of Aeschylus, in the philosophy of Aristotle, in tomb steles. The best commentary on these testimonies of the unity of their world among the Hellenes is the speech of Pericles preserved by Thucydides (I, 38 sp.) over the Athenian soldiers who fell for their native city.

Material contacts between byzantine world with its Ancient Greek heritage and Russia of the XIV-XV centuries. unconditional. Suffice it to recall Rublev's joint work with Feofan, a native of Greece, whose disciple Joseph Volotsky, the author of Trinity, called the author of The Trinity a century later. Explain only them, however, describe

the above impression of "Trinity" is not necessary. In the spiritual experience of Byzantium, everything actually ancient Greek was dissolved in later layers. The works of ancient Greek art themselves, and even more so the tomb reliefs, Rublev, most likely, never saw. But the main thing was that the most devout Orthodoxy remained the basis of the icon painter's worldview, and the Holy Scripture was the material of his knowledge and thought. He saw the meaning of his activity in serving God and glorifying the Holy Trinity. It was a worldview, knowledge and thought, animated by completely different principles than Greek antiquity, and directly opposite to it. If, nevertheless, “echoes in the depths of culture” are obvious here, then they should not be denied, but explained, following, in particular, the path laid down by the most insightful and authoritative experts and researchers. Following them, firstly, we have to admit the following: “In his reasonable balance and proportionality to everything human, Rublev is closer to the Hellenes of the classical period than to the tensely excited people of the Hellenistic world and Byzantium” (Demina N.A. Trinity Andrei Rublev. M., 1963. S. 46). Secondly, it is necessary to abandon simple and self-evident explanations: “The greatest difficulty lies in the fact that these ancient, Hellenic features, obviously guessed by Rublev in Byzantine icons, where they sounded only faint, barely distinguishable echoes, appeared in his own work with unparalleled intensity" (Danilova I.E. Decree. op. S. 38). And finally, apparently, one should turn to explanations that are not so habitually rational: “His classics were not the fruit of close study or diligent imitation. It is generated by the artist's ability to guess, this ability opened him access to everything. (Alpatov M.V. Andrei Rublev and his era. M., 1971. S. 13). Such "guessing", obviously, has to be understood as a special pre-rationally integral and penetrating into the last depths of culture intuitive knowledge; its specific mechanisms are unclear. In fact, P.A. also wrote about him. Florensky, saying that Russia XIV-XV centuries. “the only legitimate heiress of Byzantium, and through it, but also directly - ancient Hellas”, and “we are not talking about external, and therefore superficially random, imitation of antiquity, not even about historical influences, however, indisputable and numerous, but about the very spirit of culture, about the spirit of its music” and that it was precisely this legitimate heritage and the spirit of music that were reflected in Andrey Rublev’s “Trinity”, making it “the greatest of all

not only Russian, but also, of course, the world brush " (Florensky P.A. Decree. op. pp. 275, 282).

During the course of the study of the ancient heritage in the culture of Russia, both the student and the lecturer repeatedly encounter the situation just described. It arises as a concrete embodiment of that property of culture, which was above called its entelechy, could also be called its hermeneutics, or, following A.N. Veselovsky, its “counter current”, and which in many respects constitutes the culturological essence and philosophical meaning of the very phenomenon of “Russian antiquity”. Foreign cultural ideas and images do not always penetrate into a given system of culture from the outside and have a more or less lasting effect on it as a result of material contacts between the assimilating and assimilating cultural systems. More often, the process is of a different nature: in solving its internal tasks conditioned by its immanent development, a given system of culture, as it were, seeks and finds experience accumulated outside of it, and, implanting it into its own fabric, becomes a uniquely individual version of a single culture - an era, a region, or , at the limit, of the world. At the same time, two points are especially important for “Russian antiquity”. Firstly, as noted above, when entering a given system, a foreign cultural phenomenon is modified, oriented along the lines of force of its “magnetic field” and appears in a form that is sometimes radically different from its own historical original, but on the other hand, corresponding to the needs of the new environment, and therefore assimilated by this environment, in spite of their sometimes heterogeneous nature. Secondly, as we have just noted, such assimilation does not always imply material contact and conscious borrowing. As it turns out, we know incomparably more about world culture and our own past than we assume, incomparably more than we “taught”, and, turning to world cultural experience for our (not always conscious) needs, we sometimes discover and extract from it things that , it would seem, freely could not be identified. The ancient-Hellenic beginnings in the work of Andrei Rublev, and primarily in his Trinity, find their explanation in the described properties of culture. Its very properties make it possible to understand the place of antiquity in the heritage of the leading figure in Russian hesychasm of the 14th-15th centuries. - Sergius of Radonezh.

Sergius of Radonezh

This saint is one of the key figures in the entire spiritual development of Russia. Despite the outward inactivity and concentration of his life, spent almost entirely in the monastery on Makovets, his activity was woven into the most diverse aspects of Russian reality, affecting both the formation of national self-consciousness, and the nature of relations between church and state, and the ideal of monasticism, and disputes about monastic property, etc. In this work, this entire widest range of issues is not considered: a characterization of the life and work of Sergius of Radonezh is the task of a special monograph. Let us focus on only a few problems directly related to the entelechy of the ancient heritage: on the concept and practice of hesychia; on the intuition of light; on the attitude in the Sergius monastery to icon painting; in the form of the Trinity.

Ancient Greek hsucia, or, in the Byzantine pronunciation "hesychia", played in Byzantium in the XIV-XV centuries, as, indeed, before, the role of one of the main theological concepts. Its essence has been briefly explained above. In addition to its basic theological meaning, it was also associated with a certain philosophy and the direction of church politics, with some technique of self-hypnosis and ecstasy. In Russian sources concerning the life and work of Sergius, and in the main of them - the "Life" of Sergius of Radonezh, written by the younger contemporary of the saint - Epiphanius the Wise, the word "hesychia" is not used, the very concept is constantly present.

In their totality, the traits of Sergius are hesychast, which largely determined his appearance and are constantly noted by his biographer: quietness, gentleness, calmness, bright openness to people, avoidance of honors, signs of attention, recognition of merit, silence, constant solitary work and focus on a special kind of prayer ( so-called smart), suggesting the extreme intensity of religious feelings, up to tears and visions, and creating a special self-perception of inner lightness, contact with the highest spiritual principle of life. The center of this ethical complex is the concept and practice of silence - this, according to the definition of Gregory Palamas, "the ascent to the true contemplation and vision of God." According to the original routine of life in the monastery of Sergius, everyone had to constantly, alone in his cell, engage in prayer and needlework, that is, be silent. When the hermits reproach

Sergius’s zeros for having founded a monastery so far from a source of water, he replied that he was counting only on his habits, “because he wanted to be silent here alone.” Having left the monastery at a difficult moment, he turned to his friend Stefan with a request to recommend him "such a secluded place where one could be silent." Six months before his death, sensing her approach, he handed over the control of the monastery to a student, and he himself plunged into silence.

The proximity of this type of behavior and personality to the Byzantine hesychia and the realization of the hesychast religious worldview in them was expressed, in particular, in the fact that they established special relationships between the “uncreated” and “created” in man, revealing his flesh to emanation, “pneuma” , God and thus making available to the believer the main and highest state of religious being - the perception of the essence of God not only through knowledge of his transcendence, but also through the experience of this essence in its material, bodily manifestations - in its "energies". The objective connection of this system of thoughts and feelings - ultimately - with the Neoplatonic image of God and the world was indicated above.

The foregoing also explains those episodes in the “life” of Sergius, which describe his “breakthroughs” into the sphere of another, divine, reality, whether in the form of a vision of the Mother of God by him, whether in the form of a supernatural vision of persons and events that are inaccessible to physical vision - the course of Kulikovskaya battle or passing at a great distance from the monastery of his friend Stefan. The same hesy-chast-Neoplatonic perception of the relationship between the bodily and divine principles in man determined the view of the Byzantine hesychasts on the meaning of asceticism, which, as far as one can judge, was fully perceived in Makovets. In accordance with the idea of ​​Plotinus that the body carries within itself reflections of the One and therefore is, as it were, an abode, albeit a meager one, of its divine nature and beauty, hesychasts were very disapproving of the Catholic teaching about the body as a fundamental source of sin and evil, as such subject to constant cruel humiliation. On the contrary, Gregory Palamas taught: "Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit living in us." The meaning of asceticism for Sergius consisted in liberation from lusts and passions, in the purification of thoughts from everything that could distract from God and prayer (and in no case in self-torture), in poverty, and not in hunger and suffering. Sergius himself was distinguished by good health and remarkable physical strength; among the miracles that happened on Makovets, included an unexpected miraculous appearance in

the moment of extreme need of food carts; the cultivation of vegetable gardens, which provided the monks with vegetables, was, as it were, the statutory duty of each of them. The permeation of the created by the uncreated remained a universal idea, which was reflected not only in icon painting, but also in the life of hesychast monasteries.

Light, as noted above, it was the substance in which for the hesychasts the unity of the essence of God and its material manifestations stood out especially clearly and immutably. The grace bestowed on Sergius was expressed, in particular, in the light and diverse luminous phenomena, in the image of Epiphanius tightly surrounding the image of the Radonezh saint. The connection of this theme with the Hesychast doctrine of the Tabor Light is quite obvious in many places of the Life, speaking with the utmost clarity in the description of the appearance of the Mother of God to Sergius. The same theme forms a broader context for the theme of light and the golden background in icon painting, briefly described above in the words of P.A. Florensky there, where he spoke about the Byzantine origins of the theology of the icon. The theme of light as a special, existential, sacred and at the same time aesthetic category occupies a significant place in the writings of the church fathers, who are still connected in many ways with the late antique philosophical atmosphere, as, for example, in St. Augustine. It can be added that the theme of gold as a materialized image of the luminous-sacred blissful state in itself has ancient origins - in particular, in Seneca.

Considering all that has been said, there seems to be no doubt that the role of icon painting in the life of the Sergius monastery was significant and that this role should be interpreted in the context of the general Hesy-Chast understanding of the icon with its Palamist-Byzantine origin and distant philosophical Neoplatonic origins. Among the crafts for which the Sergius Monastery soon became famous, icon painting occupied a place of honor. It was here that one of the most significant icon painters of those years, Bishop Theodore of Rostov, Sergius' nephew, was brought up. The most significant icon-painting school of the era is usually associated with the Sergius Monastery in its origin - the school of the Androniev Monastery in Moscow, where Andrei Rublev worked. According to legend, the master wrote his "Trinity" on the direct impulse of Sergius.

Thus, for Hesychast Orthodoxy, the center of Christian doctrine is theology of the Trinity. This position is fully preserved in the life of Sergius and also, as far as possible,

but to judge - in his teaching, in the tradition he created. The image of the Trinity is the leitmotif of the Life. In the womb of his mother, who came to the church to pray, the unborn Sergius, according to his later biographer, announces the temple with a loud exclamation, and “not once or twice, but exactly three times, showing that he will be a true disciple of the Holy Trinity.” The mysterious old man depicted in Nesterov's painting "Vision to the lad Bartholomew", according to the Life, later went to Sergius's parents and, leaving, uttered the mysterious words: "The lad will once be the abode of the Most Holy Trinity." In the name of the Trinity, Sergius and his brother consecrated the church that they rebuilt upon their arrival at Makovets. There are many other testimonies relating to the later periods of the life of Sergius.

Such an intense experience, such a wide distribution and the key role of this particular image, the image of the Holy Trinity, are not known not only to the Catholic West, but also to Orthodox Byzantium. This should indicate that in Rus' in the era of Sergius special features were attached to it. We can only guess about them, but in at least two cases with significant certainty. The first of these features was reflected in the well-known words of Epiphanius the Wise, reproducing, like so much in the Life, the views, if not always of Sergius himself, then almost always of his immediate lifetime environment: the church on Makovets received its consecration, “so that by looking at the Holy The Trinity conquered the fear of the hateful strife of this world. Against the backdrop of the bloody confrontation between enslaved Rus' and the enslaving Tatars, which permeated the whole reality, the endless strife of princes, quarrels and intrigues of church hierarchs, and robbery of all kinds merged into a general picture of the enmity of everyone with everyone. According to Karamzin, “strength seemed right; whoever could, robbed: not only strangers, but also his own; there was no security either on the road or at home; theft has become a common plague of property. Both the moral and state existence of the people and the Christian ideal itself were destroyed. Under these conditions, the idea of ​​unity and centralization went far beyond the state and military-political framework, became an imperative and hope, a longed-for center of spiritual and practical thoughts, an actual value of culture and faith. The Trinity was presented as a divine image of the unity of all Christian and in this sense bright, their own and close life principles.

Another feature of the image of the Trinity is clear from the use in the sources as a more or less constant definition of the adjective "life-giving". The word is straight forward

meaning indicates a deeply hesychast understanding of the Trinity in the circle of Sergius, “life-giving” means laying the foundation of life, carried out in the further movement of life, which preserves with this its beginning a constant and live connection. Behind the idea of ​​the Trinity, here is revealed - of course, not at the level of theological or generally scientific reflection, but in a holistic experience of the world - an infinite historical, cultural and spiritual depth, which is "in-itself" present in the image of the Trinity in Rublev, Sergius and the successors of his work. in the ideas of life-giving power, economy, Logos and divine energy experienced by them in this image, the participation of man in the beauty of creation.

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