Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (1882 - 1937)- a follower, the largest representative of Russian religious philosophical thought, an encyclopedic educated person, a polyglot, who had brilliant talents and efficiency, for which his contemporaries called him “the new Leonardo da Vinci.”
P. Florensky was primarily a religious philosopher and left a large number of works on theology, history of philosophy, etc. Among them: “The Pillar and Ground of Truth. Experience of Orthodox theodicy”, “At the watersheds of thought. Features of concrete metaphysics”, “Cult and philosophy”, “Questions of religious self-knowledge”, “Iconostasis”, “Cosmological antinomies of I. Kant”, etc.
The main work of P. Florensky— “The pillar and ground of truth. Experience of Orthodox theodicy” (1914). The title of the work is associated with an ancient chronicle legend, according to which in 1110 a sign appeared over the Pechora Monastery, a pillar of fire, which “the whole world saw.” A pillar of fire is a type of angel sent by the will of God to lead people along the paths of providence, just as in the days of Moses the pillar of fire led Israel at night. The main idea of the book “The Pillar ....” consists in substantiating the idea that essential knowledge of the Truth is a real entry into the depths of the Divine Trinity. What is truth for the subject of knowledge, then for his object there is love for him, and for contemplative knowledge (the subject’s knowledge of the object) is beauty.
“Truth, Goodness and Beauty”- this metaphysical triad is not three different principles, but one. This is one and the same spiritual life, but viewed from different angles. As P. Florensky notes, “spiritual life, as coming from the “I”, having its focus in the “I”, is Truth. Perceived as the direct action of another, it is Good. Objectively contemplated by the third, as if radiating outward, is Beauty. Revealed truth is Love. My love itself is the action of God in me and me in God,” writes Florensky, “for the unconditional truth of God reveals itself precisely in love... God’s love passes on to us, but knowledge and contemplative joy abides in Him.
It is typical for P. Florensky to present religious and philosophical ideas not on his own behalf, but as an expression of the church’s inviolability of truth. for Florensky, it is not a conventional value, not a means of manipulating consciousness, but an absolute value associated with religious consciousness. Absolute truth is a product of faith, which is based on church authority.
The peculiarity of Florensky’s religious and philosophical position is the desire to find a moral basis for freedom of spirit in the dominance of Orthodox religious dogmas and authorities.
The center of P. Florensky’s religious and philosophical problems is the concept of “metaphysical unity” and “sophiology”. His plan is to build a “concrete metaphysics” based on the collection of world religious and scientific experience, i.e., an integral picture of the world through the perception of correspondences and mutual illumination of different layers of being: each layer finds itself in the other, recognizes, reveals related foundations. Florensky is trying to solve this problem on the basis of “philosophical-mathematical synthesis,” the purpose of which he saw in identifying and studying some primary symbols, fundamental spiritual-material structures from which various spheres of reality are composed and in accordance with which different areas of culture are organized. Florensky’s physical world is also dual. Cosmos is a struggle between two principles: Chaos and Logos. Logos is not just reason, but also culture, as a system of values, which is nothing more than an object of faith. Values of this kind are timeless. For Florensky, nature is not a phenomenon, not a system of phenomena, but genuine reality, being with the infinite power of forces acting within it, and not from the outside. Only in Christianity is nature not an imaginary, not a phenomenal being, not a “shadow” of some other being, but a living reality.
The most complex concept in P. Florensky’s theological theory is considered to be the concept of Sophia, the Wisdom of God, which he views as a universal reality, brought together by the love of God and illuminated by the beauty of the Holy Spirit. Florensky defines Sophia as the “fourth hypostasis,” as the great root of the whole creation, the creative love of God. “In relation to creation,” he wrote, “Sophia is the Guardian Angel of creation, the ideal personality of the world.”
In his activities and creativity, P. Florensky consistently expresses his life task, which he understands as “paving the way to a future integral worldview.”
P. Florensky's worldview was greatly influenced by mathematics, although he does not use its language. He sees mathematics as a necessary and first prerequisite for a worldview.
The most important feature of P. Florensky is antinomianism, at the origins of which he places. For Florensky, truth itself is an antinomy. Thesis and antithesis together form an expression of truth. Comprehension of this truth-antinomy is a feat of faith “knowing the truth requires spiritual life and, therefore, is a feat. And the feat of reason is faith, that is, self-denial. The act of self-denial of reason is precisely the statement of antinomy.”
One of the pillars of Florensky's philosophical worldview is the idea of monadology. But unlike Leibniz, the monad is not a metaphysical entity given a logical definition, but a religious soul that can come out of itself through bestowing, “exhausting” love. This distinguishes it from Leibniz's monad as the empty egoistic self-identity of the “I”.
Developing ideas, Florensky deepens the theme of the struggle between the cosmic forces of order (Logos) and Chaos. The highest example of a highly organized, increasingly complex force is Man, who stands at the center of the salvation of the world. This is facilitated by culture as a means of fighting Chaos, but not all of it, but only one oriented towards the cult, i.e. towards absolute values. Sin is a chaotic moment of the soul. The origins of the cosmic, that is, the natural and harmonious, are rooted in the Logos. Florensky identifies the cosmic principle with the divine “Harmony and Order”, which oppose chaos - lies - death - disorder - anarchy - sin.
Solving the problem “Logos conquers Chaos,” Florensky notes the “ideal affinity of the world and man,” their permeation with each other. “Thrice criminal is a predatory civilization that knows neither pity nor love for the creature, but expects from the creature only its own self-interest.” So, Chaos can be resisted: “faith - value - cult - worldview - culture.” At the center of this process of cosmization is a person who is at the top and edge of two worlds and calls on the forces of the higher world, which are the only ones capable of becoming the driving forces of cosmization.
In his work as a religious and philosophical thinker and encyclopedist, P. Florensky seemed to embody the ideal of holistic knowledge that Russian thought was looking for throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Introduction
The most durable, indestructible and constantly self-renewing thing in the world is what has been worked out by the human spirit, human thought. On September 21, 1929, priest Pavel Florensky wrote to V.I. Vernadsky “about the existence in the biosphere, or perhaps on the biosphere, of what could be called the pneumatosphere, i.e. about the existence of a special part of matter involved in the cycle of culture or, more precisely, the cycle of spirit.” Let us note that in theology there is a special section of the teaching about the Holy Spirit - pneumatology, and what the natural scientist Florensky wrote about to the natural scientist Vernadsky, the latter explained as follows: “The irreducibility of this cycle to the general cycle of life can hardly be doubted. But there is a lot of data, although not yet sufficiently formalized, hinting at the special durability of material formations worked out by the spirit, for example, objects of art. This makes us suspect the existence of a corresponding special sphere of matter in space.” To this P.A. Florensky, a scientist who attached great importance to the experimental and concrete study of matter, added: “At the present time, it is still premature to talk about the pneumatosphere as a subject of scientific study; Perhaps such a question should not have been put in writing. However, the impossibility of a personal conversation prompted me to express this idea in a letter.” 1 So, the idea of the pneumatosphere was preserved precisely in the letter. Any letters, like many other pieces of written paper, belong to the pneumatosphere, inseparable from man, whose spiritual efforts determine the “special durability” of its “material formations.”
Many of the works of priest Pavel Florensky are essentially personal conversations or letters, filled with intimate inner light playing on the edges of the composition, and addressed to the reader-friend. “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” 2 even has a clarification in the subtitle - “The Experience of Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters.” Sometimes letters, modified by P.A. Florensky, turned into chapters of his works. For example, the preface “On Makovets” to the work “At the Watersheds of Thought” 3 grew out of a letter to V.V. Rozanov. Florensky’s word is a symbol, i.e. it is always something else. This “something” should be revealed to those who, to one degree or another, are similar to the author in their worldview - hence the appeal to the individual, to a friend, and not to an abstract public. Florensky and his relatives lived in an “epistolary” time. Genre of correspondence: friend of Florensky V.V. Rozanov called it “the golden part of literature.” This genre is one of the most ancient: letters found during excavations give an idea of bygone civilizations, of personal relationships between people, and the letters of the apostles addressed to loved ones or Christian communities formed part of the Holy Scriptures. Letters are subjective by definition and preserve undistorted concrete and momentary dialogue, but they are also mythological, understanding myth as an eternally existing reality. The epistolary genre is a Socratic conversation that preserves the dialectic of communication. In this way, letters are fundamentally different from memoirs, which are essentially simulated conversations of the memoirist with himself in the past or with an interested interlocutor in the present, or justification of himself to his descendants in the future. This is why the epistolary genre is sometimes more accurate than time-honored memoirs, which often claim to be an objective reassessment of the past.
1. Biography of Florensky
Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882–1937) - Russian religious philosopher and scientist, was born on January 9 (old style) in the town of Yevlakh in the west of present-day Azerbaijan. According to his father, his family tree goes back to the Russian clergy, while his mother came from an old and noble Armenian family. Florensky very early discovered exceptional mathematical abilities and, after graduating from high school in Tiflis, entered the mathematics department of Moscow University. After graduating from the University, he did not accept the offer to stay at the University to study mathematics, but entered the Moscow Theological Academy. During these years, he, together with Ern, Sventsitsky and Fr. Brikhnichev created the “Union of Christian Struggle”, which strived for a radical renewal of the social system in the spirit of the ideas of Vl. Solovyov about the “Christian community”. Later, Florensky completely abandoned radical Christianity.
Even as a student, his interests covered philosophy, religion, art, and folklore. He enters the circle of young participants in the symbolic movement, strikes up a friendship with Andrei Bely, and his first creative experiences are articles in the symbolist magazines “New Path” and “Scales”, where he strives to introduce mathematical concepts into philosophical issues.
During his years of study at the Theological Academy, he conceived the idea of a major essay, his future book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth,” most of which he completed by the end of his studies. After graduating from the Academy in 1908, he became a teacher of philosophical disciplines there, and in 1911 he accepted the priesthood and in 1912 he was appointed editor of the academic journal “Theological Bulletin”. The full and final text of his book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” appears in 1924.
In 1918, the Theological Academy moved its work to Moscow and then closed. In 1921, the Sergiev Pasadsky Church, where Florensky served as a priest, also closed. In the years from 1916 to 1925, Florensky wrote a number of religious and philosophical works, including “Essays on the Philosophy of Cult” (1918), “Iconostasis” (1922), and worked on his memoirs. Along with this, he returned to his studies in physics and mathematics, also working in the field of technology and materials science. Since 1921 he has been working in the Glavenergo system, taking part in GOELRO, and in 1924 he published a large monograph on dielectrics. Another direction of his activity during this period was art criticism and museum work. At the same time, Florensky works in the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquities of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, being its scientific secretary, and writes a number of works on ancient Russian art.
In the second half of the twenties, Florensky’s range of activities was forced to be limited to technical issues. In the summer of 1928 he was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod, but in the same year, due to the efforts of E.P. Peshkova, will be returned from exile. In the early thirties, a campaign was launched against him in the Soviet press with articles of a pogrom and denunciation nature. On February 26, 1933, he was arrested and 5 months later, on July 26, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Since 1934, Florensky was kept in the Solovetsky camp. On November 25, 1937, he was sentenced to capital punishment by a special troika of the NKVD of the Leningrad Region and executed on December 8, 1937.
2. Stages of P. Florensky’s creativity
In the works of P.A. Florensky usually distinguishes two stages, which culminated in fundamental works on theodicy and anthropodicy.
Theodicy, which in a somewhat simplified translation means justification, explanation, justification for the existence of God, is the book "The Pillar and Ground of Truth", the only major work on philosophy published during his lifetime, written when its author was less than thirty years old. The book played a big role in the churching of the intelligentsia of both the Silver and our “Iron” ages. It was read and known when reading religious literature was unsafe. Florensky was a symbol of the scientist-priest who died in the camps. Now it is forgotten that it was dangerous to have patristic and church literature in general. Even in the late 80s, if a Bible was found by customs officers, a person would be at least “banned from traveling abroad.” The names of church leaders in general, and the names of religious philosophers in particular, were crossed out both literally and figuratively, just as the names of those objectionable to Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” were crossed out.
Another work by P.A. Florensky - anthropodicy, the justification of man - was created by a mature forty-year-old thinker without hope of publication. It includes several volumes, the manuscripts of which were secretly preserved by his family. Now they have been published through the efforts of his grandchildren, and many of them, especially “Iconostasis” 4 and “Names,” 5 have entered our culture. Priest Pavel Florensky continued his posthumous way of the cross.
However, in the works of P.A. Florensky, as in his life, it is appropriate to highlight two more stages, which correspond to completed and perfect literary and philosophical works. This is his correspondence of the beginning and end of his life and creative journey.
Letters to family from the camps 1933–1937. – the work of the last stage of the creativity of prisoner P.A. Florensky. In them, he passes on the accumulated knowledge to his children, and through them to all people, therefore the main direction of their thought is the clan as the bearer of eternity in time and the family as the main unit of human society. The focus of experience becomes the unity of the clan, family and personality, a personality that is formed, unique, but at the same time connected by thousands of threads with its clan, and through it with Eternity, for “the past has not passed away.” The clan, in turn, finds in the family a balance of formed personalities, unmerged and indivisible; in the family, the experience of the clan is transferred from parents to children, so that they “do not fall out of the grooves of time.” By analogy with previous works, letters from prisons and camps can be called genodicy, the justification of the clan, the family.
There is another, no less perfect work - Florensky’s youthful correspondence with loved ones, letters from his time studying at the Tiflis gymnasium, as well as from the period of his studies at Moscow University and the Moscow Theological Academy. In correspondence of 1897–1906. reflected the formation of Florensky’s personality, the way he separates himself from his family, from his environment, and how he sets life’s goals. It is appropriate to call this stage justification of oneself, justification of the individual - egodice. With his philosophizing, the unity of his creative biography - theodicy, anthropodicy, genodicy, egodicy - priest Pavel Florensky embraced three usually non-overlapping worlds: the heavenly - supermundane, the pneumatospheric - human, and the personal-tribal - family. Each with its own objects, their special hierarchy, specific axiomatics.
Read the biography of the philosopher thinker: facts of life, main ideas and teachings
PAVEL ALEKSANDROVICH FLORENSKY
(1882-1937)
Russian religious philosopher, scientist, priest and theologian, follower of Vl. S. Solovyova. The central issues of his main work “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” (1914) are the concept of unity and the doctrine of Sophia coming from Solovyov, as well as the justification of Orthodox dogma, especially the trinity, asceticism and veneration of icons. Main works: “The Meaning of Idealism” (1914), “Around Khomyakov” (1916), “The First Steps of Philosophy” (1917), “Iconostasis” (1918), “Imaginaries in Geometry” (1922).
Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky was a man of great talents and a unique tragic fate.
An outstanding mathematician, philosopher, theologian, art critic, prose writer, engineer, linguist, statesman, was born on January 9, 1882 near the town of Yevlakh, Elizavetpol province (now Azerbaijan) in the family of a railway engineer who built the Transcaucasian railway. The mother came from the ancient Armenian family of the Saparovs. In addition to the eldest Pavel, there were five more children in the family. In his notes “To My Children. Memories of Past Days” (1916-1924), Florensky explores the world of childhood. “The secret of genius is in preserving childhood, the child’s constitution for life. It is this constitution that gives the genius an objective perception of the world...”, he believes.
Since childhood, he looked closely at everything unusual, seeing in the “special” (this is the name of one of the sections of his memories) signals of another world. "... Where the calm course of life is disrupted, where the fabric of ordinary causality is torn, there I saw the guarantees of the spirituality of existence - perhaps, immortality, in which, however, I was always so firmly confident that it even interested me little, as it did not become occupy subsequently and was implied by itself.” The child was excited about fairy tales, magic tricks, everything that was different from the usual form of things. Florensky's religious and philosophical beliefs were formed not from philosophical books, which he read little and always reluctantly, but from childhood observations. As a child, he was excited by “the restrained power of natural forms, when behind the obvious one anticipates the infinitely more hidden.” Florensky’s father once told his son, a high school student, that his (son’s) strength “is not in the study of the particular and not in the thinking of the general, but where they are combined, on the border of the general and the particular, the abstract and the concrete. Perhaps at the same time my father also said, “on the border of poetry and science,” but I don’t remember the latter.”
Recalling his years of apprenticeship at the 2nd Tiflis gymnasium, Florensky wrote: “The passion for knowledge absorbed all my attention and time.” He was mainly involved in physics and nature observation. At the end of the gymnasium course, in the summer of 1899, Florensky experienced a spiritual crisis. The revealed limitations and relativity of physical knowledge for the first time made him think about the absolute and holistic Truth.
Florensky described this crisis of the scientific worldview in the chapter “Collapse” of the book of memoirs. He remembered well the time (“hot afternoon”) and place (“on the mountainside on the other side of the Kura”) when it suddenly became clear to him that “the entire scientific worldview is rubbish and a convention that has nothing to do with the truth.” The search for truth continued and ended with the discovery of the simple fact that the truth is in ourselves, in our lives. “The truth has always been given to people, and It is not the fruit of the teaching of some book, not rational, but something much deeper construction that lives inside us, what we live, breathe, eat."
The first spiritual impulse after the spiritual revolution was to go among the people, partly under the influence of the writings of L.N. Tolstoy, to whom Florensky wrote a letter at that time. His parents insisted on continuing his education, and in 1900 Florensky entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. The greatest influence on him was exerted by one of the founders of the Moscow Mathematical Society, N.V. Bugaev. Florensky intended to make his candidate's essay on a special mathematical topic part of a larger work synthesizing mathematics and philosophy.
In addition to studying mathematics, Florensky attended lectures at the Faculty of History and Philology and independently studied the history of art. “My studies in mathematics and physics,” he later wrote, “led me to the recognition of the formal possibility of the theoretical foundations of the universal human religious worldview (the idea of discontinuity, the theory of function, numbers). Philosophically and historically, I was convinced that we can talk not about religions, but about religion, and that it is an integral part of humanity, although it takes countless forms."
In 1904, after graduating from the university, P. A. Florensky entered the Moscow Theological Academy, wanting, as he wrote in one of his letters, “to produce a synthesis of ecclesiastical and secular culture, to completely unite with the Church, but without any compromises, honestly perceive all the positive teachings of the Church and the scientific and philosophical worldview together with art..."
The main aspiration of those years was the knowledge of spirituality not in an abstract philosophical way, but in a vital way. It is not surprising that Florensky’s Ph.D. essay “On Religious Truth” (1908), which became the core of his master’s thesis and the book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” (1914), was devoted to the ways of entering the Orthodox Church. “Living religious experience as the only legitimate way of learning dogmas,” is how P. A. Florensky himself expressed the main idea of the book. “Churchfulness is the name of that refuge where the anxiety of the heart is pacified, where the claims of the mind are pacified, where great peace descends into the mind.”
After graduating from the academy in 1908, Florensky remained as a teacher at the department of history of philosophy. Over the years of teaching at the Moscow Academy of Sciences (1908-1919), he created a number of original courses on the history of ancient philosophy, Kantian issues, philosophy of cult and culture. A.F. Losev noted that Florensky “gave a concept of Platonism that in depth and subtlety surpasses everything I have read about Plato.”
“In Father Paul,” wrote S. N. Bulgakov, “culture and churchliness, Athens and Jerusalem met, and this organic combination in itself is a fact of church-historical significance.”
Around Florensky, who also headed the magazine “Theological Bulletin” in 1912-1917, a circle of friends and acquaintances formed, who largely determined the atmosphere of Russian culture at the beginning of the 20th century. The revolution did not come as a surprise to Florensky. Moreover, he wrote a lot about the deep crisis of bourgeois civilization and often spoke about the impending collapse of the usual foundations of life. But “at a time when the whole country was delirious with revolution, and also in church circles, one after another, albeit ephemeral, church-political organizations arose, Father Paul remained alien to them, either due to his indifference to the earthly structure, or because the voice of eternity generally sounded stronger for him than the calls of modernity" (S. N. Bulgakov).
Florensky had no intention of leaving Russia, although a brilliant scientific career and, probably, world fame awaited him in the West. He was one of the first among the clergy who, while serving the Church, began to work in Soviet institutions. At the same time, Florensky never betrayed either his convictions or his priesthood, writing down for his edification in 1920: “Never give up anything from your convictions. Remember, a concession leads to a new concession, and so on ad infinitum.” As long as this was possible, that is, until 1929, Florensky worked in all Soviet institutions without taking off his cassock, thereby openly testifying that he was a priest. Florensky felt a moral duty and calling to preserve the foundations of spiritual culture for future generations.
On October 22, 1922, he joined the commission for the protection of monuments of art and antiquity of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. As a result of the commission’s activities, the enormous historical and artistic wealth of the Lavra was described and the national treasure was saved. The commission prepared the conditions for the implementation of the decree “On applying to the museum of historical and artistic values of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra”, signed on April 20, 1920 by the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. I. Lenin.
In 1921, Florensky was elected professor of the Higher Art and Technical Workshops. During the period of the emergence and flourishing of various new movements (futurism, constructivism, abstractionism), he defended the spiritual value and significance of universal forms of culture. He was convinced that a cultural figure is called upon to reveal the existing spiritual reality.
“Another view, according to which the artist and cultural figure in general organizes what he wants and how he wants, a subjective and illusionistic view of art and culture,” ultimately leads to meaninglessness and devaluation of culture, that is, to the destruction of culture and man. Florensky’s works “Analysis of spatiality and time in artistic and visual works”, “Reverse perspective”, “Iconostasis”, “At the watersheds of thought” are devoted to these issues.
As in his youth, he is convinced of the existence of two worlds - the visible and the invisible, the supersensible, which only makes itself felt with the help of the “special”. So special are, in particular, dreams that connect the world of human existence with the world beyond. Florensky sets out his concept of dreams at the beginning of the treatise “Iconostasis”. This is a very important idea for Florensky of the reverse flow of time.
“In a dream, time runs, and accelerates towards the present, against the movement of the time of waking consciousness. It is inverted through itself, and, therefore, all its concrete images are inverted along with it. And this means that we have moved into the region of imaginary space.”
Back in 1919, he published the article “The Trinity-Sergius Lavra and Russia” - a kind of philosophy of Russian culture. It is in the Lavra that Russia is felt as a whole, here is a visual embodiment of the Russian idea, appearing as the legacy of Byzantium, and through it, Ancient Hellas.
The history of Russian culture falls into two periods - Kiev and Moscow. The first is to accept Hellenism.
“After the formation from the outside of the feminine sensibility of the Russian people comes the time of courageous self-awareness and spiritual self-determination, the creation of statehood, a sustainable way of life, the manifestation of all their active creativity in art and science and the development of the economy and everyday life.”
The first period is associated with the name of Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril, the second - with St. Sergius. Female receptivity is embodied in the symbol of Sophia the Wisdom, the courageous design of the life of Moscow Rus' is in the symbol of the Trinity. The Trinity is a symbol of the unity of the Russian lands. This is exactly how Florensky interprets the Trinity of Rublev, who embodied the ideas of Sergius of Radonezh in colors.
Florensky is a theorist of ancient Russian painting. It was he who substantiated the legitimacy of the “reverse perspective” on which icon painting is built. It was not helplessness, not lack of skill that forced the ancient artist to enlarge objects in the background, but the laws inherent in our vision.
“Russian icon painting of the 14th-15th centuries is the achieved perfection of representation, the equal or even similar of which the history of world art does not know and with which, in a certain sense, only Greek sculpture can be compared - also the embodiment of spiritual images and also, after a bright upsurge, decomposed by rationalism and sensuality.” .
Simultaneously with the work on preserving cultural heritage, P. A. Florensky was involved in scientific and technical activities. He chose applied physics partly because it was dictated by the practical needs of the state and in connection with the GOELRO plan, partly because it soon became clear that he would not be allowed to study theoretical physics, as he understood it.
In 1920, Florensky began working at the Moscow Karbolit plant, the following year he moved to research work at Glavelektro VSNKh of the RSFSR, and participated in the VIII Electrotechnical Congress, at which the GOELRO plan was discussed. In 1924, he was elected a member of the Central Electrotechnical Council of Glavelektro and began working in the Moscow Joint Committee of Electrical Standards and Rules. At the same time, he created the first materials testing laboratory in the USSR at the State Experimental Electrotechnical Institute, later the department of materials science, in which dielectrics were studied.
Florensky publishes the book “Dielectrics and Their Technical Application” (1924), systematizing the latest theories and views regarding insulating materials. He was one of the first to promote synthetic plastics.
Since 1927, Florensky has been co-editor of the Technical Encyclopedia, for which he wrote 127 articles, and in 1931 he was elected to the presidium of the Bureau for Electrical Insulating Materials of the All-Union Energy Committee, in 1932 he was included in the commission for the standardization of scientific and technical designations of terms and symbols under the Labor Council and Defense of the USSR. In the book “Imaginaries and Geometries” (1922), Florensky, from the general theory of relativity, deduces the possibility of a finite Universe, when the Earth and man become the focus of creation.
Here Florensky returns to the worldview of Aristotle, Ptolemy and Dante. For him, unlike many mathematicians and physicists, the finitude of the Universe is a real fact, not so much based on mathematical calculations as arising from the universal human worldview.
“The principle of relativity,” Florensky wrote in 1924, “was accepted by me not at all after a long discussion or even without study, but simply because it was a weak attempt to put into a concept a different understanding of the world. The general principle of relativity is, to some extent, a coarser and my simplified tale of the world."
Florensky believed that the physics of the future, moving away from abstraction, should create concrete images, following the Goethe-Faraday worldview.
In 1929, in a letter to V.I. Vernadsky, developing his doctrine of the biosphere, Pavel Aleksandrovich came to the idea “about the existence in the biosphere of what could be called the pneumatosphere, that is, the existence of a special part of matter involved in the cycle of culture or , more precisely, the circulation of the spirit." He pointed out “the special durability of material formations worked out by the spirit, for example, objects of art,” which gives cultural conservation activities a planetary meaning.
In the summer of 1928, Florensky was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod. Although three months later he was returned and reinstated at the request of E.P. Peshkova, the situation in Moscow by that time was such that Florensky said: “I was in exile, returned to hard labor.”
The authors of all kinds of lampoons tried to present him as an inveterate enemy and thereby prepare public opinion to realize the inevitability and necessity of repression. Florensky was subjected to especially severe persecution for his interpretation of the theory of relativity in the book “Imaginaries in Geometry” and for the article “Physics in the Service of Mathematics” (Socialist Reconstruction and Science, 1932).
On February 26, 1933, Florensky was arrested on a warrant from the Moscow regional branch of the OGPU, and on July 26, 1933, he was sentenced by a special troika to 10 years and sent to an East Siberian camp. On December 1, he arrived at the camp, where he was assigned to work in the research department of the BAMLAG management.
On February 10, 1934, he was sent to Skovorodino to an experimental permafrost station. Here Florensky conducted research that later formed the basis for the book of his colleagues N. I. Bykov and P. N. Kapterev “Permafrost and Construction on It” (1940).
At the end of July and beginning of August 1934, Pavel Alexandrovich’s wife A. M. Florenskaya and her youngest children Olga, Mikhail and Maria were able to come to Pavel Alexandrovich (at that time the eldest sons Vasily and Kirill were on geological expeditions).
This last meeting between Florensky and his family took place thanks to the help of E. P. Peshkova. On August 17, 1934, Florensky was unexpectedly placed in the isolation ward of the Svobodny camp, and on September 1 he was sent with a special convoy to the Solovetsky special purpose camp. On November 15, he began working at the Solovetsky camp iodine industry plant, where he worked on the problem of extracting iodine and agar-agar from seaweed and made more than ten patented scientific discoveries.
On November 25, 1937, Florensky was convicted for the second time - “without the right to correspondence.” In those days this meant the death penalty. The official date of death - December 15, 1943 - initially reported to relatives, turned out to be fictitious. The tragic end of life was understood by P. A. Florensky as a manifestation of a universal spiritual law: “It is clear that light is designed in such a way that one can give to the world only by paying for it with suffering and persecution” (from a letter dated February 13, 1937).
Florensky was posthumously rehabilitated, and half a century after his murder, the family was given a manuscript written in prison from the state security archives: “The proposed state structure in the future” - the political testament of the great thinker. Florensky sees the future Russia (Union) as a single centralized state headed by a man of a prophetic nature, possessing a high intuition of culture. Florensky is obvious about the shortcomings of democracy, which serves only as a screen for political adventurers; Politics is a specialty that requires knowledge and maturity, not accessible to everyone, like any other special field. Florensky predicted a revival of faith: “This will no longer be the old and lifeless religion, but the cry of the hungry in spirit.”
On February 21, 1937, Florensky wrote to his son Kirill: “What have I been doing all my life? - Viewing the world as a single whole, as a single picture and reality, but at every moment or, more precisely, at every stage of my life, from a certain angle. world relationships in the cross-section of the world along a certain direction, in a certain plane, and tried to understand the structure of the world according to this feature that interests me at this stage. The planes of the cut changed, but one did not cancel the other, but only enriched it. Hence the constant dialecticism of thinking (change of planes of consideration ), with a constant attitude towards the world as a whole."
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Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky was born on January 21, 1882 in the town of Yevlakh in the west of present-day Azerbaijan. His paternal lineage goes back to the Russian clergy, and his mother came from an old and noble Armenian family.
The Florensky family before the departure of their eldest son Pavel to study in St. Petersburg. Spring 1900. Sitting: Alexander Ivanovich Florensky, Raisa, Pavel, Elizaveta, Olga Pavlovna, Alexander; standing: Olga, Elizaveta Pavlovna Melik-Begliarova (Saparova), Yulia
Florensky discovered mathematical abilities early and, after graduating from high school in Tiflis, entered the mathematics department of Moscow University. After graduating from the University, Pavel Alexandrovich entered the Moscow Theological Academy.
Even as a student, his interests covered philosophy, religion, art, and folklore. He enters the circle of young participants in the symbolic movement, strikes up a friendship with Andrei Bely, and his first creative experiences are articles in the symbolist magazines “New Path” and “Scales”, where he strives to introduce mathematical concepts into philosophical issues.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Novoselov (left), leader of the “Circle of Those Seeking Christian Enlightenment in the Spirit of the Orthodox Church of Christ,” in which seminarian Pavel Florensky (center) and philosopher S. N. Bulgakov took part
During his years of study at the Theological Academy, he conceived the idea of a book, “The Pillar and Ground of Truth,” most of which he completed by the end of his studies. After graduating from the Academy in 1908, he became a teacher of philosophical disciplines. In 1911 he accepted the priesthood. In 1912, he was appointed editor of the academic journal “Theological Bulletin”.
In 1918, the Theological Academy moved to Moscow and then closed completely.
In 1921, the Sergiev Pasadsky Church, where Pavel Florensky served as a priest, closed. In the period from 1916 to 1925 he worked on religious and philosophical works: “Essays on the Philosophy of Cult”, “Iconostasis”.
At the same time, Pavel Aleksandrovich is engaged in physics, mathematics, and works in the field of technology and materials science. Since 1921 he has been working in the Glavenergo system, taking part in GOELRO, and in 1924 he published a monograph on dielectrics.
In the second half of the twenties, Florensky’s range of activities was forced to be limited to technical issues. In the summer of 1928 he was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod. But in the same year, at the request of E.P. Peshkova, he was returned from exile.
In the early thirties, a huge campaign was launched against Florensky in the Soviet press with articles of a pogrom and denunciation nature. On February 26, 1933 he was arrested and 5 months later he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In September 1934 he was transferred to the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON), where he arrived on November 15, 1934. Here he worked at an iodine industry plant, where he worked on the problem of extracting iodine and agar-agar from seaweed and made a number of scientific discoveries.
Some sources claim thatbetween 17 and 19 June 1937 Florensky disappeared from the camp. On November 25, 1937, by a resolution of the Special Troika of the NKVD Directorate for the Leningrad Region, Florensky was sentenced to capital punishment “for carrying out counter-revolutionary propaganda.” According to archival data, he was shot on December 8, 1937. The place of his death and burial is unknown.
There are some legends that claim that Florensky was not shot, but for many years he worked incommunicado in one of the secret institutes on military programs, in particular, on the Soviet uranium project. These legends were confirmed by the fact that until 1989 the time and circumstances of his death were not precisely known. In 1958, after rehabilitation, Florensky’s relatives were issued a certificate of his death in the camp on December 15, 1943..
In a letter to his son Kirill dated June 3-4, 1937, Florensky outlined a number of technical details of the method for industrially producing heavy water. As you know, heavy water is used only for the production of nuclear weapons.
It was because of the questions raised in the letters about the production of heavy water that Florensky disappeared from the camp in mid-June 1937, because, as is known in secret institutes, prisoners were often deprived of the right to correspondence.
Another legend says that 13 days passed between Florensky’s death sentence and its execution. In ordinary cases, the sentences of special troikas were carried out within 1-2 days. Perhaps the delay in the execution of the sentence was caused by the fact that the prisoner was brought to Leningrad from Solovki or, vice versa.
And naturally, there remains an insignificant possibility that Florensky could work under a false name in one of the closed research institutes of the NKVD.
bibliotekar.ru ›filosofia/91.htm
P. Florensky with P. Kapterev in the camp
In his last letter from Solovki, Florensky says hopefully, as if inviting us to dialogue: “In the end, my joy lies in the thought that when the future comes to the same conclusion from the other end, they will say: “It turns out that in 1937 such and such NN already expressed the same thoughts, in a language that is old-fashioned for us. It’s amazing how they could think of our thoughts back then!” And perhaps they will organize another anniversary or memorial service, which I will only enjoy. All these commemorations after 100 years are surprisingly arrogant..."
Many great words spoken by Florensky came true, except perhaps for fears of the arrogance of descendants - should we be arrogant in front of the unfading memory of such unforgettable people as Father Pavel, especially now?.. - after all, the Word, according to Florensky, is “an infinite unit ", a unifying force-substance, the inner power of which is comprehended by the magician in his sorcery, thus forming the very existence of things; The Word is human energy, both of the human race and of an individual.
http://www.topos.ru/article/on…
Florensky. Religious and philosophical readings.
From the preface
In such difficult times, especially for intelligent Russians, turning to the spiritual achievements of our ancestors is evidence of the free, sincere and selfless movement of the soul, its instinctive thirst for insight and recovery. This is evidence that we are still not indifferent to the cause of historical truth and justice, nor to the concepts of moral duty, national conscience, honor and dignity.
It is significant that the initiative in this comes from the Kostroma land, with which the names of Fr. P. Florensky and V. V. Rozanov. It is encouraging that this act united people from such different positions in life, education, profession, political and other views. One cannot help but see in this a real step towards spiritual unity, without which there is and cannot be either civil peace and harmony, or everyday well-being. And finally, it is significant and encouraging that this event itself became possible both through the efforts and efforts of civilians and institutions, and thanks to the active assistance of the Russian Orthodox Church in the person of the Kostroma Diocesan Administration
Philosophical ideas of P. A. Florensky and modernity
The image of the thinker P. A. Florensky
Florensky, like a peasant plowman who plows the land every year for new fruiting, plows his soul. An interested reader, regardless of how much he accepted this teaching, how much he agreed with it, first of all absorbs the image of the Teacher and experiences the same feelings towards him that he expressed about Hamlet: “... After all, he suffered for us, and from “He died for us, looking for a path along which to move to a new consciousness... Don’t we feel, listening to him, that there is no time between us, that this is our true brother, speaking to us face to face.”
The very word “image” - very capacious and polysemantic - most of all, in our opinion, suits Florensky’s original interpretation of various concepts, to the study of different aspects of life. For example, he defines the mind as “something living and centripetal - an organ of a living being, a mode of relationship between the knower and the known, that is, a type of connection between being.” We are more familiar with the idea of reason that Florensky rejects: “a geometric container of its content.”
Correlation and dependence of reason and Truth.
When studying Florensky, we are faced with the question of what to focus more on - on a critical analysis of what we read or on clarifying the consequences for each of us from the “plowed soul”. (It should be recalled here that throughout human life there has been a well-known ban on vast areas of knowledge.)
V.V. Rozanov wrote to S.N. Bulgakov about Florensky: “He is... a priest,” thereby emphasizing the most important thing about Florensky. But in our time we did not know priests in general, and especially priests who studied philosophy, mathematics, philology, and much more along with theology (and often on the basis of it). The images of Leonardo da Vinci and Nicholas of Cusa involuntarily appear before us together.
And yet, without pretending to do much, let us critically examine the article “Names” from the area of knowledge available to us. In general, Florensky’s approach to the word, to the writer, to the literary work is determined by the strong influence of the era of symbolism in literature.
When interpreting the image and meaning of the main character through his name, in our opinion, the image of the author himself is lost, as well as the image of the Word he created (cf. “The Lay of Law and Grace”, “The Lay of Igor’s Host”, etc.) . In this case, we would not feel Father Paul himself standing behind the names in his writings. But that's not true. Without this powerful image, the author’s research would have crumbled into isolated abstractions or, at best, would have remained a positivist system of some kind of scientific knowledge. But, as we now know, Florensky himself continually opposed such “naked” taxonomy.
The concept of “transition” in Florensky.
The transition from the logical apparatus to concrete sensory experience occurs in Florensky at the moment of despair of consciousness from the attempt of the “morbid” mind to understand the world in parts. The disintegration of both the world and consciousness. Transition, therefore, is one of the most important concepts in Florensky: the transition from “pre-thought” to thought itself, the transitions between “I”, “you”, “he” - the concept of trinity. Transitions from pagan to Christian consciousness (article “Hamlet”). Our transition, in turn, from the purely material, pragmatic world to the world of Pavel Florensky promises us the Truth “in the first instance,” which we have so vulgarized with our irony. At the same time, let us not forget that simultaneously with the trampling of the Church of Christ, there also occurred the trampling of another shrine for us - the land from which the true tiller left and which was also dear to Florensky the patriot, Florensky the naturalist, Florensky the collector of folk art.
Semenov R. A. (Galich district)
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
FEDERAL EDUCATION AGENCY
ROSTOV STATE ECONOMIC CENTER
UNIVERSITY "(RINH)"
TEST
in the discipline "Philosophy"
on the topic: “Religious and philosophical views
P.A. Florensky" (No. 15)
Is done by a student:
Groups 412 s/s
Popova Natalya Viktorovna
Bataysk, 2012
Introduction
Biography of P. Florensky
Cosmological views of P. Florensky
The doctrine of the created Sophia of the Wisdom of God.
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
The affirmation of a strong support beyond the current in eternity, the “ontology of the spiritual world,” “paving the paths to a future integral worldview” characterizes the teaching of P.A. Florensky as a metaphysics of unity. The belief in integrity and unity, deep connection and harmony of being unites him with the philosophical quests of V. Solovyov, N. Fedorov, S. Bulgakov, N. Berdyaev, V. Vernadsky.
florensky philosophical being divine
1. Biography of P.A. Florensky
P.A. Florensky was born on January 9, 1882. In the city of Yevlakh, Elizabeth province (now Azerbaijan). His father was an engineer, builder of the Transcaucasian Railway. On his mother’s side, his roots go back to the ancient Armenian family of the Saparovs. Being of different religions, having been cut off from their clans, the father and mother sought to transform the family into a special world, to instill in the children a cult of the family principle. This cult is deeply rooted in the soul of the poor philosopher, but he complements it with the cult of the family, the memory of ancestors, and the appeal of the soul to previous generations. And deep faith in God, the Church overcomes discord and unites generations.
Impressions from the rich nature of the Caucasus, a childhood spent in constant family moves (due to his father’s service), were largely decisive factors for the formation of the personality and worldview of the impoverished philosopher. A sincere relationship with nature turns into a passion for the natural sciences.
After graduating from the Tiflis gymnasium, P. Florensky entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. At the university, his range of interests is unusually wide: philosophy, mathematics, religion, art, folklore. During these same years, he participated in the symbolist movement, met A. Bely, collaborated in the magazines “New Way” and “Libra”, where he was already trying to introduce mathematical concepts into philosophy.
After graduating from the university in 1904, he entered the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1911 he defended his master's thesis “On Spiritual Truth” and was ordained a priest.
In 1914, Florensky’s book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” was published. The Experience of Orthodox Theodicy,” which brought him recognition and fame, although it far from exhausts the problems that interested him. The main task of the book is to comprehend and express the path that led the author into the world of Christianity and Orthodoxy.
Despite the repressions against the church, P. Florensky continues his active work, revealing himself as an extremely multifaceted and unique personality. In addition to philosophy, he works professionally in several directions at once: natural science, linguistics, art theory, mathematics, technology, etc. Moreover, this work is united by one goal - the creation of a global synthesis, a unified picture of existence, reflected in the new work “At the Watersheds of Thought. Features of concrete metaphysics." But she never came out.
BUT. Lossky in “The History of Russian Philosophy” cites an excerpt about the philosopher from an article in a Pskov city newspaper, which best characterizes P. Florensky: “Everyone was surprised at the efficiency of this man: Florensky was a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, the author of the sensational book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth,” a series religious and philosophical articles, a symbolist poet whose works appeared in Libra and a separate book, a gifted astronomer who defended the geocentric concept of the world; a remarkable mathematician, the author of “Imaginary in Geometry” and a number of monographs in the field of mathematics, an authority in the field of physics, the author of the exemplary work “Dielectrics and their technical applications. General properties of dielectrics”, art historian and author of several monographs on art, and especially wood carving; a remarkable electrical engineer who held one of the main posts in the electrification commission... He was a professor of perspective painting (at Vkhutemas); an excellent musician, an astute admirer of Bach and the polyphonic music of Beethoven and his contemporaries, who knew their works perfectly. Florensky was a polyglot, fluent in Latin and ancient Greek and most modern European languages, as well as the languages of the Caucasus, Iran and India...”
First link P.A. Florensky dates back to the summer of 1928. In the early 30s. persecution was again unleashed against him, and in 1933 he was arrested. In December 1937, Father Pavel Florensky was shot in the Solovetsky camp.
The whole life and work of P.A. Florensky are imbued with a practical aspiration that is very characteristic of him, a concrete, laborious attitude to the world. He became a priest to practically, really help people. In science, Florensky was interested in research that applied in reality. Even in exile, he continued his research work; made a number of discoveries.
P.A. Florensky was a patriot of his homeland. His friend S. Bulgakov wrote: “He wanted to share his fate with his people to the end. Father Pavel organically could not and did not want to become an emigrant in the sense of a voluntary or involuntary separation from his homeland, and he himself and his destiny are the glory and greatness of Russia, although at the same time its greatest crime.”
2.Cosmological views of P.A. Florensky In Florensky's philosophical heritage there is a line that is close to the ideas of Russian cosmism. This is the direction of Russian Orthodox philosophy, which N. Berdyaev described in his work “Russian Idea” as “cosmocentric, seeing divine energies in the created world, directed towards the transformation of the world.” This is a direction that not only considers man as a microcosm, a particle of the Universe, but also raises the question of man’s active, creative mission, his ability to transform his own nature and the outside world. Man is a spiritual, rational being, capable of introducing conscious creativity into nature and spiritualizing the world. The idea of the meaning of human life is considered through the comprehension of the unity of the Earth, Space, biosphere and the interests of a particular person. The evolution of life and man as its highest manifestation is endless. Man is not the crown of creation; his improvement is limitless. This is the unity of the Cosmos and man, the essence of the idea about the meaning of the cosmic process. Man is the pinnacle of spontaneous evolution and at the same time the beginning of a new, rationally guided evolution. It is significant that a concept identical to the “noosphere” (the sphere of the mind, the idea of a new specific shell of the Earth, as if superimposed on the biosphere and exerting an increasing impact on it), is found among many followers of cosmism. Thus, P. Florensky in a letter to V.I. Vernadsky wrote on September 21, 1929: “For my part, I want to express an idea that needs specific justification and is more of a heuristic principle. This is precisely the idea of the existence in the biosphere, or perhaps on the biosphere, of what could be called the pneumatosphere, i.e. about the existence of a special part of matter involved in the cycle of culture or, more precisely, the cycle of spirit.” Russian religious thought of the late XIX-XX centuries. developed an integral concept of God-manhood as a conciliar, pan-human cosmic deification. Not only does God descend into the World to save man, but man can also, in a special act of creation, go beyond the limits of his own created nature, see God, i.e. something that ideally should become the nature of man himself. The true essence of being, or “the unity of all creation in God,” is considered by P. Florensky as a process of ascent from creation to the Absolute, and not vice versa. “A creature is a creature because it is not an Unconditionally Necessary Being and that, therefore, the existence of a creature cannot be deduced in any way not only from the idea of Truth... but even from the fact of the existence of Truth, from God.” And below: “The existence of a creature cannot be deduced by any, even the most sophisticated, reasoning, and if thinkers still try to make this deduction, then... they either perform a logical trick, or destroy the God-given creatureliness of the creature, reducing it, personality, free - although weak, from the level of godlike-creative existence to the plane of abstract existence - as an attribute or mode of the Divine.” Such an understanding of creation is possible only on the basis of Christianity. Only in Christianity is created being, nature, seen as an independent living reality, and not a reflection of some other reality. “...This attitude towards the creature became conceivable only when people saw in the creature not a simple shell of demons, not some emanation of the Divine and not its ghostly appearance, similar to the appearance of a rainbow in splashes of water, but an independent, self-legitimate and self-responsible creation of God...” , i.e. Florensky adheres to the perception of the inexhaustible forces of nature, its creative power, characteristic of Russian cosmism, acting within it, and not from the outside. The ideal sphere of existence for Florensky is a living feeling of the dynamics of being in its roots, a feeling of its living power. This is especially clearly manifested in the doctrine of concrete ideal being and in Florensky’s “philosophy of the name.” According to the views of the philosopher, to know specifically the ideal principles underlying the universe means to see a living being as a unity in heterogeneity. To recreate living being in its ideal essence is the goal of true art. Synthetic images created by artists and sculptors represent a harmonious unity of various expressions, facial expressions, and various changes over time. The ability to express ideal integrity symbolically means seeing that root, the idea, which is not an abstract concept, but a manifestation of both a higher reality and a concrete living being. Such unity is most fully manifested in the idea of beauty, which belongs to this reality and to a living being. P. Florensky’s deep experience of the secret power of every word and name is closely connected with the understanding of concrete ideal existence. The name for it is the metaphysical principle of being and knowledge, the divine essence, the substance of a thing. Florensky derives the formula: “The Name of God is God himself,” but God is neither the Name of God nor a name in general. A name is not letters or sounds. Letters and sounds are icons. God exists in His names, which we spell. But it does not exist substantially, but accidentally, in its manifestation, in its energy. The name of God has an objective divine side. The entire Orthodox ritual, including prayer, cannot be reduced solely to the subjective. People worship and pray to the icon because the Divine is present in it. Otherwise, the icon would be simply a piece of wood with more or less pronounced artistic merit. Florensky’s doctrine of name (or name-slavia) received its most complete development from A.F. Losev, his follower and student. These are the cosmological views of P. Florensky. 3.Doctrine of the created Sophia of the Wisdom of God The philosopher’s constructions end with the doctrine of the created Sophia, the Wisdom of God. The doctrine of Sophia is a certain direction of the metaphysics of unity. Sophia is the ideal prototype of the world, an affirmation of the wisdom and beauty of the universe. The focus is on P.A. Florensky is still the question of the relationship, the unity of created being and the divine, i.e. How is perfect unity of the world possible? P. Florensky answers this question by revealing the essence of Sophia in his work “The Pillar and Ground of Truth.” The sophiology of P. Florensky is based on two sources: ) traditions of the Sophia cult (affirmation of the wisdom and beauty of the universe; Sophia as the bearer under God of the eternal creative plan of the ideal prototype of the world); ) the concept of Christian Platonism (the correspondence of every thing to the ideas-eidos and the recognition of the rational world as the unity of the ideas-eidos of all things). The relationship between the World and God is expressed by Florensky in two ways. On the one hand, it consists in recognizing the meaning of created existence (being as God’s plan for it and its image in God). On the other hand, in the love of the creature for God. Consequently, each created personality corresponds to its “ideal personality” or “love - idea - monad”, in which the connection of the personality with God is realized. Love acts as the unifying force of being, which connects monads with God and among themselves. For a philosopher, love is the force that determines unity; it is the most important ontological category. In Letter XI of the "Pillar", which is called "Friendship", he analyzes in detail the various Greek verbs of love, giving a definition of what love means. This analysis shows that the Greek language distinguishes four directions in love: passion, affection, respect and affection. But not a single one of these words expresses that love - friendship, which would combine all four components. Exploring specific philological material, Florensky pursues the idea of the existence of stages of love. There are different degrees of love, gradations of love, from perfect love, "numerical identity." Consequently, there are also stages, gradations of the unity itself as the unity and connectedness gradually decrease, depending on the degree of its “beingness” and authenticity. Such unity of being, constantly supported by the creative power of love, is for P.A. Florensky “a multi-unit being”. It belongs to the divine being and is endowed not only with life, but with a hypostatic, personal nature - it is a perfect personality. This person is Sophia. From the point of view of three hypostases, Sophia for Florensky “is an ideal substance, the basis of a creature, the power or force of its being.” Further: “Sophia is the mind of the creature, its meaning, truth or truth.” And, finally, this is “the spirituality of the creature, its holiness, purity and innocence, i.e. beauty". Sophia is “the fourth hypostatic element... included in the fullness of being of the Trinity bosom... by the good pleasure of God.” In addition, Florensky brings the concept of Sophia closer to the concept of the Church and the Mother of God. Thus, since Sophia participates in the life of the Trinitarian Deity, along with her the Cosmos itself enters the sphere of the Absolute. Florensky is characterized by the recognition of the mystical unity of nature, the oncoming movement of two worlds: visible and invisible. In this cosmological channel, the doctrine of Sophia develops as an ideal root connecting the two worlds. Tracing the process of ascent from the Cosmos to the Absolute, the philosopher comes to the affirmation of the unity of all creation in God, the unity of the Cosmos and the Absolute. Thus, the “spiritual experience of the fullness of being” is comprehended. Sophia is the perfect unity of many. The principle of its structure is the identity of the parts to the whole (which, by definition, is unity). Each personality, remaining itself, at the same time merges with others, forming unity in diversity. Such identity is established through love, first of all, the love of God. Personality is dual in nature. This creature is original and suffering, beautiful and polluted at the same time. The opposites of light and darkness, good and evil, sin and salvation from it, redemption destroy personality. This destruction leads not only to mental breakdowns, but also, what is much more terrible, to the separation of the soul from the spirit, to the separation of the self from the person himself as a substantial image of God. The self becomes satanic and loses its creative, constructive power. Preserving the integrity of the individual is possible only, from Florensky’s point of view, in the love of God, in overcoming egoistic self-immersion in one’s own selfhood, and, consequently, in repentance. “In the face of eternity, everyone must be stripped of everything corruptible and become naked.” Florensky clearly contrasts reason and communion with the Church, although he speaks of the rapprochement of faith and knowledge. He affirms the super-reasonability, even anti-reasonability, of the truths of faith. In addition, the deep antinomianism of human consciousness is manifested in the separation of reason, subject to formal logic, and reason, close to faith and purified by prayer and asceticism. Thus, a single integral truth is possible only “in heaven,” and on earth there are only many truths or fragments of truth. Truth is conceivable only as an integral Unity. She is simultaneously real intelligence and rational reality, finite infinity and infinite finitude. Conclusion These, in general terms, are the religious and philosophical views of the Russian philosopher Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky. As many historians of philosophy correctly note, his theoretical constructions are far from infallible. Attitude to the philosophy of P.A. Florensky is very contradictory and ambiguous. She was subjected to serious criticism by N. Berdyaev. In particular, he considered Florensky too close to decadence, to subtle aesthetic experiences, and this contradicts the strict Orthodoxy that Florensky himself wanted to achieve. "Holy Pavel Florensky is a brilliant, gifted, exquisitely intelligent and exquisitely refined stylizer of Orthodoxy - he does not have a single thought, not a single word that has not gone through stylization. His Orthodoxy is not living, not immediate, but stylized, not naive, but sentimental (in the Schiller sense). This is an Orthodoxy of complex and refined aesthetic reflections, rather than direct creative life, an Orthodoxy of a period of decline, not of flourishing.” Teachings of P.A. Florensky was not accepted by the church. P. Florensky covers many issues of Orthodoxy in a very original, non-trivial way. This innovative approach apparently caused resistance from everyday theology. The fact is that innovation and everyday life are combined in a contradictory way for creative perception. Usually, attention is focused on the meaning of everyday life only as ordinary, too boring and uninteresting. What becomes too everyday, thereby becomes uninteresting for communication and perception. It was precisely this aspect of the matter that P. Florensky drew attention to when analyzing Orthodoxy in connection with its too everyday character. Religion must combine the everyday and the extraordinary, the unusual, otherwise it will become familiar and ordinary. The work of P. Florensky in updating the too traditional, prosaic, boring Orthodoxy was associated with his attention to art history, to the question of the importance of art for theology and church life. These ideas have important methodological significance for understanding everyday culture and the culture of communication. Despite all the criticism of the works of P.A. Florensky, they deserve very high praise. P.A. Florensky connects religious issues with modern science and the metaphysical study of those spheres of existence that go beyond the human world. He revives the ideals of Christian humanism and clearly shows that the experience of Orthodoxy cannot be separated from Russian culture, the entire spiritual heritage. The true ideal of Christian life, the achievement of holiness P.A. Florensky sees it not in withdrawal from the world, not in alienation from life, but in a complete worldview of existence, practical service to God and people. It is safe to say that the entire life and works of Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky are a vivid embodiment of this ideal. Bibliography: 1.Bychkov V.V. The aesthetic face of existence: Speculation by Pavel Florensky. - M., 1990. 2.Voronkova L.P. Worldview of P.A. Florensky // Vestn. Moscow un-ta. Ser. 7. Philosophy. - 1989. - No. 1 .Zarubin A.G. Fundamentals of philosophy. Rostov N/A, 2006 .Losev A.F. Remembering Florensky... // Lit. studies. -1988. .Khoruzhy S.S. Philosophical symbolism of P. A. Florensky and his life sources // Historical and philosophical yearbook. 1988. - M., 1989 .Shaposhnikov L.E. P.A. Florensky and modern Orthodoxy // Philosophy. Sciences. - 1987. - No. 5
