Meaning of “Immanent” History: P.A. Florensky’s Historiosophy in the Context of Russian Religious Philosophy

The article examines the nature of P.A. Florensky’s historical worldview. The author analyzes the long-standing discussion regarding the specific features of the thinker’s historical perception and presents arguments challenging the traditional view of his “ahistoricity.” Florensky’s historical ideas are situated within the context of Russian religious-philosophical thought at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and related to concepts such as empirical vs. supratemporal history, immanent vs. transcendent history, “history-as-fact” vs. “history-as-project,” the catastrophic nature of history, the end of history, and “other history.” The article reveals the affinity of this intellectual tradition with F. Schelling's ideas concerning history as the unfolding of human freedom in unconscious unity with the revelation of infinite spirit. The specific characteristics of Florensky’s proposed methodology for historical cognition are demonstrated, highlighting their intrinsic connection to his doctrine concerning discreteness, antinomy, and entropy as universal principles of being. The “particle-universal” semantic model is examined as a crucial element of historical cognition. The link between Florensky’s historical views and his cultural-philosophical and political conceptions is traced, particularly concerning his doctrine of the immanent rhythms of culture and the two principles of state organization. The article argues that, for Florensky, history is not a process but a state or condition – a supratemporal expression of the national spirit; it is presented as an intuitively cognizable phenomenon, a holistic image existing within time. History, in this view, defies predetermination and rigid determinism, characterized instead by wholeness-in-diversity, ancestral memory, rootedness in the past, and a sense of entelechial future possibilities. While the scientific cognition of history is deemed possible and necessary, Florensky maintained that, detached from religious experience, it cannot yield truly positive results.

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