The main philosophical ideas of Florence. Florensky's philosophy. Russian philosophy. Philosophy of Pavel Florensky and "new religious consciousness"
Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky was born on January 21, 1882 in the town of Yevlakh in the west of present-day Azerbaijan. His paternal lineage goes 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-Beglyarova (Saparova), Julia
Florensky early discovered mathematical abilities and after graduating from the gymnasium in Tiflis entered the mathematical department of Moscow University. After graduating from the University, Pavel Alexandrovich entered the Moscow Theological Academy.
Even as a student, his interests spanned philosophy, religion, art, 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 journals Novy Put and Libra, where he seeks to introduce mathematical concepts into philosophical problems.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Novosyolov (left), head of the "Circle of Seekers for Christian Enlightenment in the Spirit of the Orthodox Church of Christ", in which the siminarist Pavel Florensky (center) and philosopher S. Bulgakov took part
During the years of study at the Theological Academy, he conceived the idea of the book "The Pillar and the Establishment of Truth", most of which he completes by the end of his studies. After graduating from the Academy in 1908, he became a teacher of philosophical disciplines. In 1911 he accepts the priesthood. In 1912 he was appointed editor of the academic journal "Theological Bulletin".
In 1918, the Theological Academy moved to Moscow, and then completely closed.
In 1921 the Church of St. Sergius was closed, where Pavel Florensky served as a priest. In the period from 1916 to 1925 he worked on religious and philosophical works: "Essays on the Philosophy of the Cult", "Iconostasis".
In parallel, Pavel Aleksandrovich is engaged in physics, mathematics, works in the field of technology and materials science. From 1921 he worked in the Glavenergo system, taking part in GOELRO, and in 1924 he published a monograph on dielectrics.
In the second half of the twenties, the circle of Florensky's studies 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. On February 26, 1933, he was arrested and after 5 months 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 the plant of the iodine industry, where he dealt with the problem of the extraction of 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 counterrevolutionary 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, and for many years he worked incommunicado in one of the secret institutions 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 known exactly. 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 set out a number of technical details of a method for industrial production of 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 it is known from secret institutions, prisoners were often deprived of the right to correspond.
Another legend says that 13 days elapsed between the passing of the death sentence to Florensky and its execution. In normal cases, sentences of special triplets 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 taken to Leningrad from Solovki, or vice versa.
And naturally, there remains an insignificant probability that Florensky could work under a false name in one of the closed scientific research institutes of the NKVD.
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P. Florensky with P. Kaptev in the camp
In the last letter from Solovkov, Florensky says with hope, as if inviting us to dialogue: “In the end, I conceal joy in the thought that when the future approaches the same from the other end, they will say:“ It turns out that in 1937 such and such NN expressed the same thoughts, in an old-fashioned language for us. It's amazing how then they could think of our thoughts! " And perhaps they will arrange another anniversary or funeral service, which I will only make fun of. All these commemorations in 100 years are surprisingly arrogant ... "
Many great words spoken by Florensky have come true, except perhaps apart from fears of the arrogance of descendants - are we 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 the magician comprehends in his magic, thus forming the very existence of things; The word is human energy, both of the human race and of an individual.
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Florensky. Religious and philosophical readings.
From the preface
Turning to such difficult times, especially for intelligent Russians, to the spiritual achievements of their ancestors, is evidence of the free, sincere and disinterested movement of the soul, its instinctive thirst for insight and recovery. This is evidence that we are still not indifferent to either the cause of historical truth and justice, or the concept 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 has united people of such different life positions, education, profession, political and other views. It is impossible not to see in this a real step towards spiritual unity, without which there is and cannot be either civil peace and harmony, or worldly 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. The interested reader, regardless of how much he perceived this teaching, how much he agreed with it, first of all absorbs the image of the Teacher and experiences the same feelings for him that he expressed about Hamlet: “... “He died for us, looking for a path along which one can go to a new consciousness ... Do we not 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" is very capacious and polysemantic - most of all, in our opinion, is suitable for the original interpretation of various concepts by Florensky, for the study of different aspects of life. For example, the mind is defined by him as "something living and centripetal - an organ of a living being, a mode of relationship between the knower and the knowable, that is, a kind of connection of being." We are more accustomed to the idea of mind that Florensky rejects: "the geometric container of its content."
Correlation and dependence of reason and Truth.
When studying Florensky, we face the question of what to focus more on - on a critical analysis of what has been read or on clarifying the consequences for each of us from the "plowed soul". (It should be recalled here that there has been a notorious ban on vast areas of knowledge throughout human life.)
V. V. Rozanov wrote to S. N. Bulgakov about Florensky: "He is ... a priest", thus emphasizing the most important thing in Florensky. But in our time we did not know priests in general, and even more so priests who, together with theology (and often on the basis of it), are also involved in philosophy, mathematics, philology, and many others. Involuntarily, the images of Leonardo da Vinci and Nicholas of Cusa stand in front of us in aggregate.
And yet, without pretending to much, let us consider critically the article "Names" from the field 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 protagonist through his name, in our opinion, the image of the author himself is lost, as well as the image of the Word created by him (cf. “The Word about Law and Grace”, “The Word about Igor's Host”, etc.) ... In this case, we would not have felt Father Paul himself, standing behind the names in his writings. But this is not the case. Without this powerful image, the author's research would have crumbled into separate abstractions or, at best, would have remained a positivist system of some scientific knowledge. But, as we now know, Florensky himself constantly opposed such a "bare" taxonomy.
Florensky's concept of "transition".
The transition from the logical apparatus to the concrete sensory experience occurs in Florensky at the moment of despair of consciousness from the attempt of the "painful" mind to cognize the world in parts. Dispersion of both the world and consciousness. Thus, the transition is one of the most important concepts for 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, another shrine was trampled on for us - the land from which the true cultivator left and which was also dear to Florensky the patriot, Florensky the naturalist, Florensky the collector of folk art.
Semenov R. A. (Galich district)
The philosophy of a name is a trend in Russian religious philosophy, developed by Π. A. Florensky (1882-1937), S. N. Bulgakov (1871 - 1944), A. F. Losev (1893-1988), V. F. Ern (1882-1917) and others, which arose on the basis of disputes about name-glories, which were conducted within the framework of Russian Orthodox theology and monastic practice.
The theological dispute ("Athos Troubles") over name-glory began with the publication of the book of Schema-monk Hilarion "On the Caucasus Mountains. Conversation of two elders-ascetics about inner union with the Lord through the prayer of Jesus Christ, or Spiritual activity of modern hermits" (1907). The central place in this book is the description of the special state in which a believer finds himself during prayer. Based on the theory and practice of hesychasm (or palamism), Hilarion argued that an ascetic who performs an appropriate system of exercises can achieve a state of ecstasy in which he is able to see the radiation emanating from God - "Tabor light", that is, the light that, according to the Gospel, the apostles saw on Mount Tabor. This light was interpreted by Gregory Palamas as "energy" emanating from God, as the self-manifestation of God, accessible to human perception, while God himself is absolutely inaccessible to people. Palamism is an officially recognized teaching of the Orthodox Church.
In the name-glory, the central problem around which the main controversy unfolded was the interpretation of the essence of the Name of God, namely: is it Divine energy or Divine essence, or neither, but simply a human naming?
In the latter case, the worship of the Name of God and his deification is idolatry and heresy.
In resolving this issue, two opposing camps arose among theologians. One of them (imyaslavie) was headed by the hieroschemamonk of the Russian Panteleimon monastery on Mount Athos (in Greece) Anthony (Bulatovich). He argued that "every Name of God, as the truth revealed by God, is God Himself." Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky), Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvensky), and Professor S.V. Troitsky became the leaders of the second camp (nameborians). And it was the position of the latter that was supported by the Holy Synod in its message of May 18, 1913, declaring the name-glory heresy.
However, this decision of the Holy Synod could not prevent further work on the philosophical and religious understanding of this problem, i.e. development of "philosophy of the name". On the one hand, the conservatism of the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church and of the Holy Synod has long caused discontent among significant circles of the Russian intelligentsia. In particular, the reaction to it was the emergence of the previously mentioned trend of "new religious consciousness" (Merezhkovsky, Berdyaev, etc.). And the emergence of the philosophy of the name was the development of this general trend. On the other hand, the philosophical analysis of the name in Russian philosophy proceeded on a wave of general interest in the problem of language and signs, which was characteristic at that time for Western philosophy in general and associated with the development of linguistics and semiotics.
The interpretation of the Name of God in name-glory is rooted in a long tradition of veneration of Divine names, which goes far beyond the boundaries of Christianity (both chronologically and "geographically"). So, in the Avesta the entire "Hymn to Ahura-Mazda" is almost entirely devoted to the names (about seventy) of the supreme god of Good and their mystical meaning. A significant part of the efforts of the Kabbalists was devoted to finding the true names of God and angels. In Muslim philosophy there is a teaching about ninety-nine "beautiful names of Allah" and his hundredth - secret - name. In Christianity, the theme of divine names runs like a red thread through all mystical theology, starting with Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory Palamas, etc.
But the problem of divine names, in turn, is rooted in the even more general problem of the essence of names in general. The name plays an important role in many cultures and belief systems of the Ancient World and even the primitive world. So, according to the beliefs of many peoples (Egyptians, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, etc.), the name of a person is one of his souls, and knowledge of the name gives power over the one to whom the given name belongs; a similar belief existed even regarding the true names of pagan gods.
This attitude to names was born from the idea of an inextricable connection ("essentially connection") between names and the objects designated by these names, as well as between the very speech sounds that make up the name, and some ontological entities (or their properties). In philosophy, this point of view was substantiated and developed by a variety of thinkers and in a variety of philosophical teachings: in Vedanta, Confucianism, Kabbalah, Sufism, Hesychasm, etc., and in Ancient Greece - by Heraclitus, the Stoics and Plato. But already in the philosophy of the Ancient World, an opposite point of view arose: names are just conventional signs of the designated objects and are in no way connected with them. In ancient China, this point of view was adhered to by Sun Kuan (IV-III centuries BC), in Ancient India - in the Nyaya school, in Ancient Greece Aristotle became its exponent. It was Aristotle's approach that was established and became generally accepted in European culture (in linguistics, logic, philosophy) in the New Time. Thus, the decision of the "name-fighters" and the Holy Synod was carried out in the "spirit of the New Age," while the supporters of the name-glory developed a tradition that rather dominated the culture of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages.
Significant interest in the word and its essence in the European tradition was associated with the fact that, starting from the era of early Christianity, the Word (Logos) was identified with Christ. Therefore, at least the Divine Word and the Name of God could in no way be interpreted as a purely conventional sign.
This tendency was especially clearly manifested in the work of the priest. Pavel Florensky... He believed that there is a substantial, not a conditional connection between language and being. Words and names in particular are carriers of the energies of being directed outward, there are forms of manifestation of being; in linguistic signs, being is revealed to a person, and at the same time there is an interaction of the energy of the knower (person) and the knowable (being).
In his work "Names" and in the essays that make up the work "At the watersheds of thought", he repeatedly argued that speech sounds that make up words have a direct connection both with ontological entities and with the mental (emotional) state of a person, and able to act on a person (listener). Moreover, Florensky asserted the presence of a certain connection between the names and historical and cultural events in which the leading role was played by people bearing these names, or the events that took place by the "iodine banner" of these names (for example, the name "Bartholomew" and "Bartholomew's night" during France in the 17th century).
Florensky owns the famous formulation of the main thesis of the name-glory: "The name of God is God, but God is not the Name of God."
In-depth justification receives teaching about language and names from a priest Sergei Bulgakov in the book "Philosophy of the Name". Like Soloviev, Berdyaev, Frank and many other Russian thinkers, the central theme of Bulgakov's philosophy is the relationship between the Absolute (God) and man, an individual. Bulgakov affirms their inseparable connection, the deep fusion of human essence with being. Due to this "fusion" each person has the opportunity to become himself, to "unfold" his essence, find his voice and "sound" in the Universe. The words (names) that make up the language are not "conventional signs", accidentally or "but agreements" between people denoting the corresponding things. Words exist objectively and are connected with being itself, they are not created with a person, but rather "through" a person; therefore, the "naming" of a name is, in a certain sense, the "creation" of what is named, and hence (through man) the self-manifestation of a thing from the literal, illogical darkness of being into the light of certainty and conceivability. Thus, for Bulgakov, the word turns out to be an anthronocosmic essence.
A serious contribution to the development of the philosophy of the name was made by and A. F. Losev, the pen of which belongs to another "Philosophy of the Name" and the work "Thing and Name". In his views, Losev was close to Platonism and Neoplatonism (being, apparently, the most prominent expert in all of Russian philosophy). Therefore, it is not surprising that he was also close to Plato's interpretation of names as having a direct connection with the named.
But in Losev, the act of naming acquires a fundamental ontological character: it is in it that concrete being is born from the Absolute. This act is carried out by the Primordial Essence itself (the Absolute, God), which is associated with the internal need of the Primary Essence to express itself, to manifest itself outside and thereby comprehend itself. But the Primordial Essence is opposed only by Nothing (meon), which thereby also receives the ontological status of Otherness and gives rise to the initial dualism of Losev's system. Therefore, the manifestation of oneself "outside" means "incarnation in meon" for the Primordial Essence. The act of naming thus turns out to be a way of introducing "meaning" into meaningless and dark Otherness, and, incarnating there with different strengths, meaning also receives a different degree of meaningfulness in things (manifested in their properties).
In his works, Losev not only gave a certain philosophical interpretation of the nature of the word, but, in fact, developed a whole and integral system of fundamental concepts of semiotics. Unfortunately, as was often the case with Russian thinkers, his ideas for a long time remained little known and poorly studied both in the West and in Russia itself.
Florensky P.A.
Biographical information. Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) - famous Russian theologian, religious philosopher and scientist. He studied at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University, at the same time attended lectures on philosophy at the Faculty of History and Philology (1900–1904). After graduation, he entered the Moscow Theological Academy (1904-1908). In 1911 he became a priest. In 1914 he defended his master's thesis. In 1912-1917. taught at the Moscow Theological Academy: first as an associate professor, then as a professor. Since 1918 - Member of the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquity of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra; in 1921-1924 - Professor of the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops, from 1921 he worked at Glavenergo VSNKH USSR and was a research assistant at the State Experimental Electrotechnical Institute. In 1928 he was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod, returned from exile three months later and continued to work in the same place. In 1933 he was arrested, sentenced to 10 years and exiled to a camp. In 1937 (already during his stay in the camp on Solovki) he was convicted again and sentenced to death. In 1958 he was completely rehabilitated.
Major works. "On the Symbols of Infinity" (1904); "The Pillar and Statement of Truth" (1914); The Meaning of Idealism (1914); Essays on the Philosophy of the Cult (1918); "Iconostasis" (1922); Symbolic Description (1922); "Imaginations in Geometry" (1922); Reverse Perspective (published 1967); "Analysis of Spatiality in Artistic Works" (published in 1982); "Names" (published 1988). Florensky also wrote a number of works in the field of physics, in particular, a large book on dielectrics (1924).
Philosophical views. Florensky's philosophical teaching is mainly built within the framework of the Orthodox worldview and is in many respects the development of Solovyov's philosophy of all-unity, although it differs fundamentally from it in some essential points.
The doctrine of total unity. According to Florensky, the work of thought directed at the world reveals that the present state of being is the state of "fallen being". The world appears before us as a kingdom of fragmentation, uncertainty, "a swamp of relativity and convention." Seeing all this, consciousness is trying to find some kind of "ground under its feet", to find something stable, something that you can grab onto, something that you can lean on, that is. trying to find an unconditional beginning - Truth. Florensky sees the main feature of being in its current state in antinomy (inconsistency), this being is "flawed", the world is "cracked", and the reason for this is sin and evil. Overcoming them is possible only by a deed of faith and love. One of the main questions that worries Florensky: what is the connection between the local ("defective", created) being with "non-defective"?
Florensky distinguishes, first of all, two lines as "connecting links": "from God to the world" and "from the world to God".
The essence of the line going "from God to the world" is that God is the creator of the created world. Consequently, the plan of God and the image of God are embodied in this world, and this is what gives meaning to created being. The essence of the reverse line "from the world to God" is determined by the fact that each created person is capable of love for God and for each other, constituting a kind of "unity in love" (Scheme 202).
Scheme 202.
Every real created personality in Florensky corresponds to its ideal personality, which is a kind of "atom" of love and divine meaning, originally put by God into the created world. At the same time, love is understood by Florensky as a blessed unifying force of being, therefore it is thanks to love for each other that separate created personalities are linked together into a kind of "unity in love", becoming a "multi-unity being". But at the same time, the love inherent in created personalities also binds them to God. From this, love receives an ontological interpretation: it is "the Church or the Body of Christ", and therefore also the "Pillar and confirmation of the Truth."
According to Florensky, this "multi-unity being" is itself a person, and it is he who calls Sophia ("the wisdom of God"). Individuals, gathered in this unity by the power of love, are identical to each other in their essence (Florensky calls this type of identity "numerical"), although they remain different and independent personalities. Sophia, being a person, is also in a relation of identity with each individual person in her composition. Thus, it turns out that each part (or, more precisely, an element of the set) turns out to be numerically identical to the whole. According to Florensky, this type of relationship between parts and the whole is the expression of the principle of total unity.
Concrete metaphysics. Florensky called his teaching about the world "concrete metaphysics"... The sensual corporeal world is understood by him as the manifestation and embodiment of the Divine plan, and in its entirety. Consequently, there are no other meanings (ideas, spiritual essences, etc.), except for those that are embodied and manifested in the world. On the other hand, everything that exists in the world carries a divine meaning, is a manifestation of the image of God, and therefore is two-fold (sensual-spiritual). Hence, the interpretation of everything that appears in the world as symbols follows. "Being is Cosmos and Symbol"- says Florensky.
In his concrete metaphysics, he brings the spiritual and sensual worlds closer together, in particular, endowing spiritual essences with spatial and temporal characteristics. But only for the spiritual world they turn out to be "inverted", "inverted", "mirrored": thus, time moves in the opposite direction in this world, the effect precedes the cause, there is a reverse perspective, and so on. In essence, the spiritual and bodily worlds turn out to be not two different worlds, but one two-fold. Thus, Florensky (and he notices it himself) resurrects some of the features of primitive thinking. The most important role among the symbols is played by linguistic signs (names), hence Florensky's close attention to the dispute between "imyaslavia" and "name-fighters". And in his "philosophy of the name" he unconditionally adheres to the "imyaslaviyu".
However, a complete "mirror" semblance of the earthly being to the heavenly one takes place only in the case of an ideal sensual being. Our being is a sinful, fallen world, and the consequence of this is a violation of the proper relationship between the spiritual and sensual worlds. That is why in the phenomena of the earthly world we see the Divine meaning distorted, the true symbolic reality is not given to us, and it is our task to restore, reconstruct it. This is what the church performs in church cult, "sanctifying reality."
The doctrine of the types of culture. Florensky viewed human culture as a struggle between two principles: Chaos and the Divine Logos. He believed that in the history of mankind there is a rhythmic change of two types of culture: Renaissance (revival) and medieval. The first type of culture is characterized by the domination of Chaos, and its basic law is the law of increasing entropy (ie, uncertainty, Chaos) in all spheres of life, left to themselves; the growth of entropy leads to universal equalization, and hence to death. But Chaos is opposed by the Divine Logos, which carries order, and the basic law of medieval culture can be formulated as the law of decreasing entropy and increasing order (ectropy). The leading force of medieval culture is faith, it determines the cult, and the cult is the worldview, which gives rise to the corresponding culture. At the beginning of the XX century. the next period of the Renaissance culture is coming to an end, and it is being replaced by the medieval one again (Table 127).
Table 127
Two types of culture and their characteristics
Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (1882 - 1937)- a follower of the philosophy of total unity of Solovyov, the largest representative of Russian religious philosophical thought, an encyclopedically educated person, a polyglot with brilliant talents and hard work, 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 and cultural studies. Among them: “Pillar and statement of truth. It is pertinent to note that the 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- “Pillar and statement of truth. It is pertinent to note that the 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 is in sight ”. A pillar of fire - ϶ᴛᴏ the appearance of an angel sent by the will of God to lead people along the ways of providence, as in the days of Moses, a pillar of fire led Israel at night. The main idea of the book "Pillar ...." consists in substantiating the idea that the essential knowledge of Truth is a real entry into the depths of the Divine Trinity. What is truth for the subject of knowledge, then for his object is love for him, and for contemplative cognition (the subject's cognition of the object) is beauty.
"Truth, Goodness and Beauty"- this metaphysical triad is not three different principles, but one. It is one and the same spiritual life, but viewed from different angles. As P. Florensky notes, “the spiritual life as emanating from the“ I ”, in the“ I ”which has concentration, is the Truth. Perceived as a direct action of another - it is Good. Objectively, contemplated by the third, as radiating outwardly, is Beauty. The revealed truth is Love. My very love 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 remain in Him.
P. Florensky is characterized by the presentation of religious and philosophical ideas not in his name, but as an expression of the Church's inviolability of truth. For Florensky, truth is not a conventional value, not a means of manipulating consciousness, but an absolute value associated with religious consciousness. Absolute truth will be a product of faith, which rests on ecclesiastical authority.
The peculiarity of Florensky's religious and philosophical position is the desire to find a moral basis for the freedom of the spirit in the dominance of Orthodox religious dogmas and authorities.
The center of P. Florensky's religious and philosophical problems will be the concept of “metaphysical total unity” and “sophiology”. His idea is to build a “concrete metaphysics” based on the collection of world religious and scientific experience, that is, an integral picture of the world through the vision and mutual translucence of different layers of life: each layer finds itself in another, recognizes, reveals related grounds. Florensky tries to solve this problem on the basis of “philosophical and mathematical synthesis,” whose purpose he saw in the identification and study of certain primary symbols, fundamental spiritual and material structures, from which various spheres of reality are composed and in which different areas of culture are organized. Florensky's physical world is also dual. Cosmos - ϶ᴛᴏ the struggle of 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 a true reality, being with an infinite power of forces acting in it, and not from outside. Only in Christianity will nature be not an imaginary, not a phenomenal being, not a “shadow” of some other being, but a living reality.
The most difficult in the theological theory of P. Florensky is the concept of Sophia, the Wisdom of God, which he considers as a universal reality, gathered 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 creature, the creative love of God. "In relation to the creature, he said, Sophia is the Guardian Angel of the creature, the ideal person of the world."
In his activity and creativity P. Florensky consistently expresses his life task, which he understands as “paving the way to the future integral worldview”.
The worldview of P. Florensky was greatly influenced by mathematics, although he does not use its language. It is worth noting that he sees in mathematics the necessary and first prerequisite for a worldview.
Do not forget that the most important feature of P. Florensky's worldview is antinomianism, at the origins of which he puts Plato. Florensky's truth itself is an antinomy. Note that thesis and antithesis together form an expression of truth. Comprehension of ϶ᴛᴏth truth-antinomy is a feat of faith “cognition of truth requires spiritual life and, therefore, is a feat. And the exploit of reason is faith, that is, self-denial. The act of self-denial of reason is the statement of the antinomy ”.
It is important to note that one of the pillars of Florensky's philosophical outlook will be the idea of monadology. But unlike Leibniz, the monad is not a metaphysical entity given by a logical definition, but a religious soul, which can leave itself through bestowing, “depleting” love. This distinguishes it from Leibniz's monad as an empty egoistic self-identity of the “I”.
Developing the ideas of cosmism, 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 will be the 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, but exclusively oriented towards the cult, that is, towards absolute values. Sin is the chaotic moment of the soul. The origins of the cosmic, that is, the lawful and harmonious, are rooted in the Logos. Florensky identifies the cosmic principle with the divine "Lada and System", which resist 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, knowing neither pity nor love for the creature, but expecting from the creature exclusively self-interest." Thus, they are able to resist Chaos: “faith - value - cult - world outlook - culture”. At the center of this process of cosmization is a person who is at the top and on the verge of two worlds and invokes the forces of the higher world, which are the only ones capable of becoming the driving forces of cosmization.
In the work of the religious-philosophical thinker and scientist-encyclopedist P. Florensky, as it were, embodied the ideal of integral knowledge that Russian thought was looking for throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Pavel Florensky is a Russian Orthodox thinker. Today, there is still a discussion among scientists-philosophers, whether it was this independent Russian philosophy at all, or whether the works of Russian thinkers should be considered a kind of reflection of Western European philosophy.
This question, as scientists note, if approached without ideological bias, is really not so simple at all. The Western European and Russian traditions of philosophical thought have the same main roots-sources: ancient philosophy and Christianity - it is they that initially so sharply separate European and Russian philosophy from Eastern philosophy, for example, Chinese. And yet, just as from a single root - the teachings of Christ - different trees grew: Orthodoxy and Catholicism, so Russian and Western European philosophical aspirations followed different paths. "Russian philosophical enlightenment," writes P. Florensky in his review-response to the essay of the student of the Moscow Academy of Arts A. Danilovsky "The History of Teaching Philosophical Sciences in the Spiritual and Educational Institutions of Russia," precisely the spiritual school, and only the very end of the 19th century was marked by the emergence of philosophy, which spread in a different way ... The history of teaching philosophical sciences in the spiritual educational institutions of Russia should be recognized as the main thread of the history of Russian philosophy in general, meaning, in this case, under "Russian philosophy" the totality of all philosophical trends that agitated Russian society.But, bearing on itself the high cultural task of the philosophical enlightenment of Russia, the theological school has never been only a mechanical transmitter of Western thought.All representatives of the spiritual school have a special imprint characteristic of Russian thought, and if the history of teaching philosophical sciences is the main The thread of the history of Russian philosophy in the broad sense, this latter is always closely intertwined with the history of Russian philosophy, in the narrow sense of philosophy, natively Russian. " This, according to Florensky, is the historical essence of the issue. Attempts by Western thought to take possession of Russian thought for P. Florensky were largely personified in the figure of Kant, "the great cunning", as he put it. Plato and Kant - these two figures, as it were, absorb the qualities of polar philosophical and, more broadly, spiritual in general, ideas and ideals. In the interpretation of Florensky, "Kant takes the life-understanding of Plato and changes the sign in front of him - from plus to minus. Then all pluses change to minuses and all minuses to pluses in all the positions of Platonism: this is how Kantianism arises."
Russian philosophy, according to Florensky, is an original thought, originating in the teachings of Plato, enriched by the experience of Western European ideas, but not only and not so much by the experience of acceptance as by the experience of overcoming. And one more characteristic, which should be called self-evident in this interpretation, is that the main idea of Russian philosophy is a "religious idea," P. Florensky believed, that is, Russian philosophical thought at the beginning of the 20th century realized itself in a religious and philosophical understanding of the world. And the viability of the "Russian idea" is determined by its rootedness in Orthodoxy. “If Russian philosophy is possible,” wrote Father Pavel, “then only as an Orthodox philosophy, as a philosophy of Orthodox faith, as a precious robe of gold - reason - and precious stones - gains of experience - on the shrine of Orthodoxy” (Greetings to Professor A.I. Vvedensky in connection with his 25-year service at the MDA).
The features of Russian philosophical thought that are of particular importance for Florensky, but to a much lesser extent distinguished by other thinkers (for example, university science), should be called the "philosophical principles of Slavophilism" and their opposition to "periodically repeated attacks of rationalist principles" and, of course, positivism. in many respects acceptable to Vl. Soloviev, but already rejected by Florensky.
These are the main features of Russian philosophy, to the figures of which Florensky considered himself and therefore saw them not only in his predecessors and contemporaries, but above all, perhaps, in himself, in his own world outlook.
Proceeding from the fact that the main works were published in the 1910-20s, it would be quite legitimate to conclude that Florensky is a thinker of the beginning of the 20th century, especially since much in his works is based on the achievements of science of this particular time (for example, on G. Cantor's set theory and N.V. Bugaev's ideas in mathematics). But if you believe Florensky himself and take his words with complete seriousness and faith, then immediately doubts arise: "Florensky considers his own worldview to be appropriate in terms of the style of the 14th-15th centuries of the Russian Middle Ages, but he foresees and wants other constructions corresponding to a deeper a return to the Middle Ages "- this is what Florensky wrote in his abstract in 1925-1926. And a little earlier, in January 1924, Florensky made a wonderful entry in his "Memoirs": "I was brought up and grew up as a completely new man; and therefore I felt myself to be the limit and end of the new time; the last (of course, not chronologically) man of the new time and therefore the first - the coming Middle Ages. "
Here there was an intersection of two kinds of time - chronological time and world-contemplative time. They, both of these times, as taught by positivist science, must always fundamentally coincide. From barbarism - through antiquity, through the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance - to the New Time, if there are no breaks. So in all areas of history, including the history of thought. Florensky, however, felt him quite differently: just as in the field of spatial thinking, instead of "the monotonous plain of the earth's surface," he saw, a man of cult and philosopher of the cult, "everywhere - ladders of ascents and descents," and in time he sensitively felt breaks and breaks when " time comes out of its grooves. " And he considered himself a man and a thinker of the turning point - the last and the first at the same time. And not only himself. The younger contemporary of Florensky A.F. Losev gave him the following description: "I regard the philosophy of Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky as a transitional period between the old and the new. For here the most essential from the old and the most essential from the new are present. And all this is summarized in one person."
The main feature of the world outlook of the Renaissance and the New Age (including, of course, the Enlightenment - the true peak of this tradition) is anthropocentrism, i.e. a teaching that puts a human Personality in the center of the world. Raising a person (who “sounds proudly” and is the “king of nature”) to an unimaginable height, such a consciousness separates him from the world, puts him above the world, and this world itself turns only into a field of his activity, that is, into something external to man. The most obvious consequence of such a world outlook is ecological: a person belongs to the world "predatory-mechanical, taking away from him what seems necessary to him, knocking it out with blood, disregarding losses. And how could it be otherwise if a person does not recognize himself as a part of the world. , but considers himself to be his undivided ruler, if there is no one above a person to whom he should give an account of what he has done. "
For the person himself, such a consciousness is no less destructive. When this type of world outlook was still at the stage of formation in the Renaissance, then even then the greatest achievements of the "liberated man" on their other side turned into the greatest atrocities. Such geniuses and titans as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo professed the same faith as the geniuses of villainy, for example, Cesare Borgia and his family. AF Losev characterized this type of personality in this way - the "reverse side of titanism", that is, the personality in its "endless self-affirmation and in its unrestrained spontaneity of any passions, any affects and any whims, reaching some kind of narcissism and to some wild and bestial aesthetics. "
In Russian religious philosophy of that time, the idea of using antinomies for theological purposes was often encountered. B. P. Vysheslavtsev, S. N. Bulgakov, L. I. Shestov, V. F. Ern, and others devoted pages of their works to arguments about the "antinomies of Christian life", about the "antinomies of the biography of God." ) used this concept most often episodically, while in the works of Florensky antinomies become the subject of special and systematic consideration, eventually turning into a widely implemented methodology.
Read the biography of the philosopher thinker: facts of life, main ideas and teachings
PAVEL ALEXANDROVICH 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 the Establishment of Truth" (1914) are the concept of total unity and the doctrine of Sophia, coming from Soloviev, as well as the substantiation of Orthodox dogma, especially trinity, asceticism and the veneration of icons. Major works: "The Meaning of Idealism" (1914), "Near Khomyakov" (1916), "The First Steps of Philosophy" (1917), "Iconostasis" (1918), "Imaginations in Geometry" (1922).
Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky was a man of great talents and a unique tragic fate.
The outstanding mathematician, philosopher, theologian, art critic, prose writer, engineer, linguist, statesman was born on January 9, 1882 near the town of Yevlakh in the Elizavetpol province (now Azerbaijan) in the family of a railway engineer who was building the Transcaucasian railway. Mother came from the ancient Armenian family of the Saparovs. In addition to the elder Paul, the family had five more children. In his notes "To my children. Memories of the past" (1916-1924) Florensky explores the world of childhood. "The secret of genius is in preserving childhood, a child's constitution for life. It is this constitution that gives the genius an objective perception of the world ...", - he said.
From childhood, he looked closely at everything extraordinary, seeing in the "special" (as one of the sections of his memories is called) signals of another world. "... Where the calm course of life is disturbed, where the fabric of ordinary causality is torn, there I saw the pledges of the spirituality of being, - perhaps, immortality, in which, however, I was always so firmly convinced that it even interested me a little. to occupy and subsequently and was implied by itself. " The child was worried about fairy tales, tricks, everything that was different from the usual kind of things. Florensky's religious and philosophical convictions were not formed from philosophical books, which he read little and always reluctantly, but from childhood observations. As a child, he was worried about "the restrained power of natural forms, when, beyond the obvious, an infinitely more intimate is anticipated." Florensky's father once told his schoolboy son that his (son's) strength "lies not in the study of the particular and not in the general thinking, but where they are combined, on the border of the general and the particular, the abstract and the concrete. my father also said - "on the border of poetry and science," but I do not firmly remember the latter. "
Recalling the years of apprenticeship in the 2nd Tiflis gymnasium, Florensky wrote: "The passion for knowledge consumed all my attention and time." Mostly he was engaged in physics and observation of nature. At the end of the gymnasium course, in the summer of 1899, Florensky experienced a spiritual crisis. The discovered limitation and relativity of physical knowledge for the first time made him think about the absolute and integral Truth.
Florensky described this crisis of the scientific outlook in the chapter "The Collapse" of the book of memoirs. He well remembered the time ("hot afternoon") and place ("on the side of the mountain on the other side of the Kura"), when it suddenly became clear to him that "the entire scientific worldview is rubbish and convention that has nothing to do with truth." The search for truth continued and ended with the discovery of the simple fact that the truth is in ourselves, in our life. "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 emotional impulse after the spiritual upheaval was to go to the people partly under the influence of the writings of Leo Tolstoy, to whom Florensky wrote a letter at that time. Parents insisted on continuing their education, and in 1900 Florensky entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University. One of the founders of the Moscow Mathematical Society N.V. Bugaev had the greatest influence on him. Florensky intended to make his Ph.D. essay on a special mathematical topic part of a large work synthesizing mathematics and philosophy.
In addition to studying mathematics, Florensky attended lectures at the Faculty of History and Philology, independently studied the history of art. “My studies in mathematics and physics,” he later wrote, “led me to recognize the formal possibility of the theoretical foundations of the universal human religious outlook (the idea of discontinuity, the theory of function, numbers). religion, and that it is an integral part of humanity, although it takes countless forms. "
In 1904, after graduating from university, P.A.Florensky entered the Moscow Theological Academy, wishing, as he wrote in one of his letters, “to produce a synthesis of churchliness and secular culture, to fully unite with the Church, but without any compromises, honestly to perceive all the positive teaching of the Church and the scientific and philosophical worldview together with art ... "
The main aspiration of those years was the knowledge of spirituality, not abstractly philosophically, but vital. It is not surprising that Florensky's Ph.D. essay "On Religious Truth" (1908), which became the nucleus of his master's thesis and the book "The Pillar and Statement of Truth" (1914), was devoted to the ways of entering the Orthodox Church. "Living religious experience, as the only legitimate way of cognizing dogmas" - this is how P. A. Florensky himself expressed the main idea of the book. "Churchness is the name of that haven where the anxiety of the heart is pacified, where the pretensions of reason are pacified, where great peace descends into reason."
After graduating from the academy in 1908, Florensky was left as a teacher at the Department of the History of Philosophy. During 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 problems, philosophy of cult and culture. AF Losev noted that Florensky "gave the concept of Platonism, in depth and subtlety surpassing everything that I have read about Plato."
"In Father Paul," wrote SN Bulgakov, "culture and churchliness met, Athens and Jerusalem, and this organic combination is in itself a fact of church-historical significance."
Around Florensky, who in 1912-1917 also headed the journal "Theological Herald", formed a circle of friends and acquaintances 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, often talked about the impending collapse of the usual foundations of life. But "at a time when the whole country was raving about revolution, and also in church circles, one after another, albeit ephemeral, church-political organizations arose, Father Paul remained alien to them, whether because of his indifference to earthly order, or because the voice of eternity in general sounded for him stronger than the calls of modernity "(SN Bulgakov).
Florensky did not intend to leave Russia, although a brilliant scientific career and, probably, world fame awaited him in the West. He was one of the first clergymen who, while serving the Church, began to work in Soviet institutions. At the same time, Florensky never betrayed either his convictions or his holy dignity, writing down for himself in 1920: "From his convictions, never compromise anything. Remember, a concession leads to a new concession, and so - ad infinitum." As long as this was possible, that is, until 1929, Florensky worked in all Soviet institutions without removing his cassock, thereby openly testifying that he was a priest. Florensky felt a moral duty and a vocation 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 huge 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 the appeal 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 Artistic and Technical Workshops. During the period of the birth and flowering of various new trends (futurism, constructivism, abstractionism), he defended the spiritual value and significance of universal forms of culture. He was convinced that a cultural figure was called upon to reveal the existing spiritual reality.
“Another view, according to which an artist and a cultural worker 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. These questions are devoted to the works of Florensky "Analysis of spatiality and time in artistic and graphic works", "Reverse perspective", "Iconostasis", "At the watersheds of thought".
As in his youth, he is convinced of the existence of two worlds - the visible and the invisible, the supersensible, only making itself felt with the help of the "special". Such special are, in particular, dreams, which connect the world of human existence with the world beyond. Florensky expounds his concept of dreams at the beginning of his treatise "Iconostasis". This is a very important idea of the reverse flow of time for Florensky.
"In a dream, time is running, and is rapidly running towards the present, against the movement of time of waking consciousness. It is turned through itself, and, therefore, all its concrete images are turned inside out with it. And this means that we have passed 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, which appears as the heritage of Byzantium, and through it - of Ancient Hellas.
The history of Russian culture falls into two periods - Kiev and Moscow. The first is the acceptance of Hellenism.
“For the formation of the feminine receptivity of the Russian people from the outside comes the time of courageous self-awareness and spiritual self-determination, the creation of statehood, a stable 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 the Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril, the second - the Monk Sergius. Feminine susceptibility is embodied in the symbol of Sophia-Wisdom, the courageous design of the life of Moscow Russia - in the symbol of the Trinity 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 theoretician 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 a 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 XIV-XV centuries is the achieved perfection of figurativeness, equal or even similar to 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 the preservation of the 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 to engage in theoretical physics, as he understood it, he would not be allowed.
In 1920, Florensky began working at the Moscow plant "Karbolit", the next year he transferred to research work at the Glavelektro VSNKh of the RSFSR, 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 Glavelectro and began working in the Moscow Joint Committee of Electrotechnical Norms and Rules. At the same time, at the State Experimental Electrotechnical Institute, he created the first laboratory for testing materials in the USSR, 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 on insulating materials. He was one of the first to promote synthetic plastics.
Since 1927, Florensky is a 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 "Imaginations 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 finiteness of the Universe is a real fact, not so much based on mathematical calculations, but arising from the general human worldview.
“The principle of relativity,” wrote Florensky in 1924, “was not adopted by me at all after a long discussion and even without study, but simply because it was a feeble attempt to clothe a different understanding of the world with a concept. The general principle of relativity is, to some extent, coarse 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 pneumatosphere, that is, about the existence of a special part of the substance involved in the circulation of culture or or rather, the circulation of the spirit. " He pointed out "the special persistence of material formations worked out by the spirit, for example, objects of art", which gives the cultural protection activity 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 EP 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 sorts of libels tried to present him as an inveterate enemy and thus prepare public opinion for the realization of the inevitability and necessity of repression. Florensky was especially severely persecuted for his interpretation of the theory of relativity in his book "Imaginations in Geometry" and for his article "Physics in the Service of Mathematics" ("Socialist Reconstruction and Science", 1932).
On February 26, 1933, Florensky was arrested on a warrant issued by the Moscow regional branch of the OGPU, and on July 26, 1933, he was sentenced by a special troika to 10 years and sent under escort 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 administration.
On February 10, 1934, he was sent to Skovorodino to an experimental permafrost station. Here Florensky conducted research, which later formed the basis for the book of his collaborators N. I. Bykov and P. N. Kapterev "Permafrost and construction on it" (1940).
In late July and early August 1934, A. M. Florenskaya's wife with their youngest children Olga, Mikhail and Maria were able to visit Pavel Alexandrovich (at that time the eldest sons Vasily and Kirill were on geological expeditions).
This last meeting of Florensky with 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 escort to the Solovetsky special purpose camp. On November 15, he began working at the Solovetsky camp plant of the iodine industry, where he dealt with the problem of the extraction of iodine and agar-agar from seaweed and made more than ten patented scientific discoveries.
On November 25, 1937, Florensky was convicted a second time - "without the right to correspond." In those days, this meant the death penalty. The official date of death - December 15, 1943, - originally reported to the relatives, turned out to be fictitious. The tragic end of life was recognized by PA Florensky as a manifestation of a universal spiritual law: "It is clear that the light is arranged in such a way that one can give 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, a manuscript written in prison was handed over to the family from the archives of the state security: "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 warehouse with a high intuition of culture. Florensky is aware of the flaws of democracy, which serves only as a screen for political adventurers; Politics is a specialty that requires knowledge and maturity, inaccessible to everyone, like any other special area. Florensky predicted the revival of faith: "This will no longer be an old and lifeless religion, but the cry of those who are hungry in spirit."
On February 21, 1937, Florensky wrote to his son Kirill: “What have I been doing all my life? - I looked at 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 of view. world relations in the section of the world in a certain direction, in a certain plane and tried to understand the structure of the world according to this feature that occupies me at this stage.The planes of the section changed, but one did not cancel the other, but only enriched. ), with a constant attitude towards the world as a whole. "
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