Artistic

Philosophical

Mythological

Religious

The structure of cognition Feeling-perception-representation-concept-judgment-inference-theory. Before the presentation - the sensory stage, the presentation - the border point - concrete thinking up to and including the concept. Next is abstract thinking.

Truth and delusion. Knowledge and Faith.

In philosophy

The most famous definition of truth was articulated by Aristotle and formulated by Isaac the Israelite; from Avicenna it was perceived by Thomas Aquinas and all scholastic philosophy. This definition says that truth is conformitas seu adaequatio intentionalis intellectus cum re (intentional agreement of the intellect with a real thing or correspondence to it).

In general philosophy, social and humanitarian and natural, technical sciences, truth is understood as the correspondence of provisions to a certain criterion of verifiability: theoretical, empirical.

In philosophy, the concept of truth coincides with a set of basic concepts that make it possible to distinguish between reliable and unreliable knowledge according to the degree of its fundamental ability to agree with reality, according to its independent inconsistency / consistency.

Faith is conditioned by the peculiarities of the human psyche. Unconditionally accepted information, texts, phenomena, events or one's own ideas and conclusions in the future can serve as the basis for self-identification, determine some of the actions, judgments, norms of behavior and relationships

In what way does a person comprehend the world?

is it the science the only possible way knowledge? As we have already noted, the methods of cognition are determined by the characteristics of the cognizing subject, available knowledge and historically established cognitive traditions. In the history of mankind, various ways of comprehending reality arose, replaced each other and coexisted at the same time: everyday-empirical, artistic, philosophical, scientific. The methods of comprehending reality also include mythology and religion. Their role in the emergence philosophy was revealed in the first chapter. The purpose of this section is to show the specifics of mythology and religion as special ways of knowing the world nature,culture and human being.

Ordinary cognition

Commonplace- this is everyday knowledge, formed under the influence of various forms of activity: productive, aesthetic, political, etc. It is realized as a kind of collective experience accumulated by generations of people in the course of their activities. Individual everyday cognition is associated with emotional experience and comprehension of life experience personality. A person learns about the world not so much in the process of its scientific research, as in its life and practical development. The universality of such development is defined by the modern German philosopher Gadamer as "the experience of the world." The prerequisites for everyday knowledge are rooted in the diverse forms of human activity, which is regulated by customs, ceremonies, holidays and rituals, collective actions (play, dance, etc.), moral and other prescriptions and prohibitions. They serve as a means of introducing people to the collective social and cultural experience, regulate people's attitudes towards nature and to each other, act as background knowledge, on the basis of which new knowledge is obtained.

Mythological knowledge

The oldest form of comprehending reality is myth The need to go beyond the limits of experience inherent in the human mind is realized initially in the form of a myth. Its goal is to explain those natural phenomena and human existence that a person cannot understand, relying only on everyday knowledge, because since ancient times a person was worried about such phenomena as birth and death, where the world came from, in which he lives, what is fire and how a person is he was possessed by where this lake came from, what a thunderstorm is, etc. The myth is that way of understanding and explaining the phenomena of nature and human life, which is due to the peculiarities of the thinking of primitive man. And this thinking anthropomorphic, a person explains the world from himself, sees the world as spiritualized and rational as he himself. “Everything that exists lives,” the shaman repeats in his spells. "The lamp walks, the skins talk in the sack, the tree trembles and groans under the blows of the ax." The specificity of the myth lies in the nondiscrimination of a thing and an image, a body and a property, a "beginning" and a principle. The myth interprets the similarity and sequence of events as a causal relationship.

The myth tells about events of the highest degree universal: about the death and immortality of a person, the emergence of the world, about heroic deeds, cultural achievements (for example, the myth of the abduction of fire), etc. The content of the myth is expressed in a metaphorical form, so that the characteristic properties, signs of one object are transferred to another. Mythological images acquire the meaning of symbols that embody some idea, which makes mythological generalizations broad and ambiguous. Transferring his human characteristics to the natural world, man creates metaphors that have significant cognitive and worldview meaning. Preserving for millennia in the culture of subsequent generations, the myth is enriched with new interpretations, its content appears before us in the form of symbols that have an almost endless semantic perspective. The principle of plurality, the reflection of all elements of being in interconnection, polysemy, sensual concreteness and anthropomorphism (that is, transferring human qualities to objects of nature), the identification of an image and an object - these are the characteristic features of mythological knowledge. As a way of comprehending reality, myth models, classifies and interprets a person, society, and the world.

In form, a myth is a tradition that symbolically expresses an event as allegedly taking place in nature or in the history of certain peoples. Cosmogonic myths formed the idea of ​​space as a single hierarchically an organized whole, driven and governed by the Logos or Reason. Because of this, the cosmos was presented as something with the highest perfection. These concepts were concretized in the understanding of the cosmos as the kingdom of the elements of earth, air and fire, in their transformations forming the eternal cycle of nature. The myths also contained practical recommendations that should be strictly followed. Although the practical recommendations of mythology were not proven, but simply postulated, they are the result of the generalization of the experience of many generations of people.

It is natural to pose the question of whether a myth is a way of knowing, or is it just a set of unchanging truths, contains a ready-made knowledge? The answer can be this: a myth is both a collection of ready-made knowledge, ideas, beliefs, and a way of comprehending the world. Why? First, because it has many meanings, it easily fits into modern culture, making it possible to use it for orientation in a changing world. Secondly, a myth is a starting point that sets some rules for cognitive operations and, consequently, for further myth-making. Myth is an irreplaceable element of culture. In antiquity, it was viewed as a poetic expression truth. And today, myth is often a deliberate semi-deception designed to manipulate people's behavior. Our contemporary is immersed in the realm of myths that are very far from reality. It is no coincidence that the myth persists in modern society, performing its characteristic functions.

Religious knowledge

Religion- one of the necessary and historically earliest forms of knowledge. The main purpose of religion is to determine the meaning of human life, the existence of nature and society. Based on the experience accumulated by mankind, it regulates the most important manifestations of human life: behavior in the family and in everyday life, moral precepts, attitude to work, nature, society,to the state. Justifying its idea of ​​the ultimate meanings of the universe, religion contributes to the understanding of the unity of the world and humanity. It contains systems of truths that can change a person and his life. A feature of religious doctrines is that they express collective experience and therefore are authoritative not only for every believer, but also for non-believers.

Religious doctrines are designed to answer the questions: Is there a God? How to know it? And is it possible to know God? Religion embodies its vision of the world in the texts of Holy Scripture, as well as in the procedure and objects of religious worship, each element of which has a symbolic meaning. As AF Losev emphasized, "the incomprehensible divine essence itself appears and reveals itself in certain faces."

The temple, the icon, not to mention the texts of Holy Scripture, have a deeply symbolic content. Religious symbolism contains a balance of idea and image. In the icon, the idea of ​​God is given concretely, visually, in its entirety. Although the image of God, represented in the faces, is not reducible to them, but with the help of the image it appears in a rich, versatile and multifaceted semantic interpretation. Christian symbolism is multifaceted and multidimensional, suggesting different levels of understanding, initiation into the sacrament of the transcendent, supernatural world.

As a specific form consciousness, religion relies on mechanisms faith, beliefs, knowledge (everyday experience). Religious Faith Supported reflection, arises or is strengthened through the understanding of the tragic experience of the individual (the threat of death or the loss of loved ones), which prompts him to radically change his life and way of thinking. According to the testimony of believers, religious faith can arise in the act of religious revelation.

Religion has developed its own specific methods of intuitive-mystical awareness of the world and man. These include revelation and meditation.

The concept of revelation was formed in the process evolution religious beliefs. Initially, it was considered as a gift of special chosen ones of higher powers who, in a state of trance, speak on their behalf (soothsayers, shamans, holy fools, etc.). Christianity views revelation as the result of the intense self-absorption of the individual to whom the truth is revealed. The truth of revelation is not an object of seeking, but the result of divine will, which chooses this or that person as a means of personal understanding (“I am ... the truth,” says Christ). Christian theology points to the hierarchical nature of revelation: the New Testament, the Old Testament, the texts of the church fathers. In contrast to the orthodox understanding of revelation, representatives of the reformist movement in Christianity claim that any person is able to communicate with God and receive revelation from Him. Constant appeal to the texts of Holy Scripture allows the believer to discover new truths in them, empathize with the subtle nuances of semantic shades, check their own life with them and rethink it.

Meditation is reflection, immersion of the mind in an object, idea, world, which is achieved by deep mental concentration on one object and the elimination of all extraneous factors that distract a person's attention. In religion, meditation means the dissolution of individual consciousness in the Absolute. In Christianity, meditation is interpreted as the fusion of the human and the divine. personality... The course of meditation, as a rule, is associated with a certain sequence of actions that add up to the natural process of reflection. It involves the use of a number of psychotechnical techniques. At the same time, the believer uses meditation, prayer, not for self-development or knowledge, but for merging with the divine principle, for communication with God. The effectiveness of meditation is also recognized by science - primarily as a cognitive device: systems of psychotechnics and autogenic training, designed for a therapeutic effect, are not associated with religious and mystical ideas.

Artistic cognition

Artistic comprehension being is a special form of reflection, which receives a specific implementation at all stages of the existence of art, from the concept of the work and ending with its perception by the public. Artistic creativity can be defined as the objectification in the language of art of the thoughts and feelings of the artist in an inextricable connection with the object of comprehension - the world as a whole. In terms of form, artistic activity is aimed at the object, in essence - it acts as a self-expression of the individual, the intimate side of her spiritual life, the embodiment of the artist's ideals and tastes.

The peculiarity of artistic comprehension of reality is largely explained by the specifics of the language arts... Its primary source is the sign systems of culture, which are included in the system of social communications... Art transforms the languages ​​of culture into means of artistic thinking and communication. At the same time, the language of art carries, as it were, a double layer of meanings: both the initial, actually cultural (which in the perception of the work can be interpreted literally), and the conventional, artistic, significantly different from the literal. "Playing with meanings" does not take away from reality, but allows you to see it from a completely unexpected side.

There are constant discoveries in the perception of art. And the most important among them is the discovery of our own I, which, like a flash of lightning, illuminates the hidden corners of our soul. Such a state of consciousness, which is characterized by sudden discoveries, is called "insight" in psychology, i.e. insight. The perception of art is associated with an incomparable pleasure associated with self-knowledge. The mechanism of perception of art is empathy, i.e. identification with the image, which can be accompanied by the deepest emotional upheaval. The complex interconversion of positive and negative emotional states encourages a person to rethink his own experience and is able to make a revolution in his system values.

Thus, the cognitive significance of art lies in the fact that it is a unity knowledge and self-knowledge. Art is a source of spiritual enrichment of a person. It activates the creative potential of a person, develops his ability to understand cultural meanings and behavior in the world of culture and society as a whole. In the perception of art, object and subject are merged. The individual realizes his involvement in the content of the work and discovers it in himself. Therefore, the cognitive activity awakened by the perception of art is defined as reflection.

Philosophical knowledge

Philosophy as well as art and religion, is not limited to solving cognitive tasks. Its main function is related to art and religion - the spiritual orientation of a person in the world. Philosophical knowledge is subordinated to this goal. Philosophy forms a general idea of ​​the world as a whole, of its "first" principles, the universal interconnection of phenomena, universal properties and laws of being. A.F. Losev defines philosophical concepts as symbols, since they contain "an active principle of orientation in boundless reality and understanding of the relationships prevailing in it."

Philosophy creates an integral image of the world, but not the world itself, detached from the subject, but the world in its correlation with man. Norms and ideals scientific knowledge and the achievements of art, human anxiety, needs and searches for the meaning of life, his moral quest decisively determine the philosopher's worldview, the very type of philosophizing. Philosophy acts as the self-awareness of society, the theoretical expression of its culture. It is integrated with a culture that determines the style of thinking, values, ideals, philosophical problems and the nature of its consideration. It is addressed both to the world as a whole and to man as a subject of culture.

Philosophical knowledge is characterized as wisdom. Wisdom is the standard of a holistic understanding of the world and a person's place in it. Philosophy uses knowledge (scientific and non-scientific) to find truths that are meaningful to all people. I. Kant understood by philosophy the knowledge of the last goals of the human mind, which gives the highest value to other knowledge, since it reveals their significance for man. Philosophy defines a system of principles, views, values ​​and ideals that guide human activity, his relationship to the world and himself. Forming the image of the world in its correlation with man, philosophy inevitably turns to the world of values. Ethics, aesthetics, axiology- the essence of the special areas of philosophical knowledge, addressed to the world of values. It is no coincidence that philosophy receives a bright and convincing expression in art. Many philosophers use his figurative metaphorical language to express their ideas.

In different historical periods and in the conditions of different civilizations, different ways of comprehending reality prevail - ordinary knowledge, art, mythology or religion. The area of ​​specialized cognitive activity is science. Science owes its origin and development, impressive achievements to European civilization, which has created unique conditions for the formation of scientific rationality. We will consider the specifics of science, the methods and forms of cognition it uses in the next section.

This article is about cognition in general. For cognition as a subject of psychology, see Cognitiveness

Cognition- a set of processes, procedures and methods for acquiring knowledge about the phenomena and laws of the objective world. Cognition is the main subject of epistemology (theory of knowledge).

The purpose of knowledge

Descartes saw the goal of knowledge in mastering the forces of nature, as well as in the improvement of man himself. In modern literature, the goal of knowledge is seen in the truth.

Forms of cognition

Speaking about the forms of cognition, first of all, scientific and unscientific cognition are distinguished, and the latter includes everyday and artistic cognition, as well as mythological and religious cognition.

Scientific

Scientific cognition, in contrast to other diverse forms of cognition, is a process of obtaining objective, true knowledge aimed at reflecting the laws of reality. Scientific knowledge has a threefold task and is associated with the description, explanation and prediction of the processes and phenomena of reality.

Artistic

Reflection of existing reality through signs, symbols, artistic images.

Philosophical

Philosophical knowledge is a special type of holistic knowledge of the world. The specificity of philosophical knowledge is the desire to go beyond the fragmented reality and find the fundamental principles and foundations of being, to determine the place of man in it. Philosophical knowledge is based on certain ideological premises. It includes: epistemology and ontology. In the process of philosophical cognition, the subject seeks not only to understand the existence and place of a person in it, but also to show what they should be (axiology), that is, seeks to create an ideal, the content of which will be determined by the worldview postulates chosen by the philosopher.

Mythological

Mythological knowledge is characteristic of primitive culture. Such knowledge acts as a holistic pre-theoretical explanation of reality with the help of sensually visual images of supernatural beings, legendary heroes, who for the carrier of mythological knowledge appear as real participants in his daily life. Mythological knowledge is characterized by personification, the personification of complex concepts in the images of gods and anthropomorphism.

Religious

The object of religious knowledge in monotheistic religions, that is, in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is God, who manifests himself as a Subject, a Person. The act of religious knowledge, or the act of faith, has a personalistic-dialogical character. The goal of religious knowledge in monotheism is not the creation or clarification of a system of ideas about God, but the salvation of a person, for whom the discovery of the existence of God simultaneously turns out to be an act of self-discovery, self-knowledge and forms in his consciousness the demand for moral renewal.

Levels of scientific knowledge

There are two levels of scientific knowledge: empirical (experimental, sensory) and theoretical (rational). The empirical level of knowledge is expressed in observation and experiment, while the theoretical level is expressed in the generalization of the results of the empirical level in hypotheses, laws and theories.

History of the concept

Plato

Everything available to knowledge, Plato in the VI book "State" divides into two types: sensually perceived and cognized by the mind. The relationship between the spheres of the sensuously perceived and intelligible determines the relationship of different cognitive abilities: sensations allow one to cognize (albeit inaccurately) the world of things, the mind allows one to see the truth.

Kant

"There are two main stems of human knowledge, perhaps growing out of one common, but unknown to us root, namely sensibility and reason: through sensibility, objects are given to us, but they are thought by reason." I. Kant

see also

• Perception
• Cognitive
• Self-knowledge

Notes (edit)

Literature

• Kokhanovsky VP et al. Fundamentals of the philosophy of science. M .: Phoenix, 2007. 608 with ISBN 978-5-222-11009-6
• For the theory of knowledge, see the Brockhaus and Efron dictionary or the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

Links

• Cognition (epistemology)
• N. Hartmann. Cognition in the light of ontology
• Frolov I. T. "Introduction to philosophy" / Chapter VI. "Cognition"

What are the features of mythological, artistic-figurative and religious knowledge

An important role, especially at the initial stage of human history, was played by mythological knowledge . Its specificity lies in the fact that it is a fantastic reflection of reality, is an unconsciously artistic reworking of nature and society by folk fantasy.

Within the framework of mythology, certain knowledge was developed about nature, space, about people themselves, their conditions of life, forms of communication, etc. Mythological thinking is not just an unrestrained fantasy game, but a kind of modeling of the world, which allows you to record and transfer the experience of generations.

The most widespread myths were cosmogonic myths describing the creation of the world, the origin of people and animals. This process was often presented as the transformation of chaos into space through a gradual ordering, which was accompanied by the struggle of gods or heroes with demonic forces. The man in the myth was an organic part of the world he observed. And at the same time, everything in the world is drawn in the image and likeness of man.

The way of explaining natural and social processes in myth was the artistic-figurative description of these processes, i.e. story about them. The content of the myth seemed real to the primitive consciousness in the highest sense, since it embodied the collective “reliable” experience of understanding life by many previous generations. This experience was a matter of faith, but not of criticism.

Mythological thinking is characterized by its fusion with the emotional sphere, an indistinct separation of the object and subject of knowledge, object and sign, thing and word, origin (genesis) and essence of phenomena, etc.

Already within the framework of mythology, artistic form of cognition which later received the most developed expression in art. Although it does not specifically solve cognitive tasks, it contains a rather powerful epistemological potential.

Of course, artistic activity is not entirely reducible to cognition. Artistically mastering reality in its various forms (painting, music, theater, etc.), satisfying the aesthetic needs of people, art simultaneously cognizes the world, and man creates it - including according to the laws of beauty. The structure of any work of art always includes, in one form or another, certain knowledge about nature, about different people and their characters, about certain countries and peoples, their culture, customs, morals, way of life, about their feelings, thoughts, etc. ...

A specific form of mastering reality in art is the artistic image, thinking in images, “feeling thought”. Science is mastering the world primarily in the system of abstractions.

One of the ancient forms of knowledge, genetically related to mythology, is religious knowledge . Its specificity consists not only in the ability to transcend, to go beyond the limits of sensually tangible reality and the recognition of another ("supernatural", "heavenly") world - in other words, God or gods.

The unique ability of religion lies in postulating feedback between these worlds, i.e. the ability of the supernatural world to have a decisive impact on the fate of the earthly world and its inhabitants. And this connection is realized with the help of a cult, without which religion is unthinkable.

The peculiarities of religious knowledge are determined by the fact that it is conditioned by the direct emotional form of people's attitude to the earthly forces dominating them (natural and social). As a fantastic reflection of the latter, religious ideas contain certain knowledge about reality, although often perverse. For example, the Bible and the Koran are quite a wise and deep treasury of religious and other knowledge accumulated by people for centuries and millennia.

However, religion (like mythology) did not produce knowledge in a systematic, let alone theoretical form. It has never performed and does not perform the function of producing objective knowledge that is universal, holistic, self-valuable and demonstrative in nature. If religious knowledge is characterized by the combination of an emotional attitude to the world with belief in the supernatural, then essence of scientific knowledge- rationality, which contains both emotions and faith as subordinate moments.

The most important concept of religion and religious knowledge is "faith". In this regard, we note that in the concept of "faith" two aspects should be distinguished: a) religious faith; b) faith as confidence (trust, conviction), i.e. what has not yet been verified, has not been proven at the moment, in various forms of scientific knowledge and, above all, in hypotheses. As A. Einstein emphasized, “without belief that it is possible to embrace reality with our theoretical constructions, without belief in the inner harmony of our world, there can be no science. This belief is and will always remain the main motive of all scientific creativity. "

At the same time, some other scientists believe that science also needs religious faith, and they propose to "build a bridge" not only between philosophy and science, but also between science and religion.

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Religious method of cognition

The word "method" means a path to something. In religion, this is the path to God, to the knowledge of Him and the world and man created by Him. This is how the meaning of this word has been interpreted since ancient times. The ancient Chinese category "Tao" means "the righteous path, the path of Heaven." Confucius (VI-V centuries BC) defined Tao as a good path of social events and human life, depending both on "predestination" and on an individual. In the ancient Indian "Upanishads" the idea is defended that the path to the god Brahma is associated with a long and difficult tension of all the spiritual forces of the personality (Atman). Indian "Yoga" sees the main path of human life in the direction of the soul to God. Buddhism teaches the "path" that leads from the vanities of the world to the knowledge of causality and through this - to absolute tranquility - "nirvana". In Orthodoxy, the idea of ​​"smart doing" was developed, ie. performing prayers, vigils, fasting, bowing to the ground with a conscious appeal of all feelings and thoughts to God. In Catholicism, medieval mystics have developed a method of mystical knowledge. As you can see, there are many methods offered. To some extent, this is understandable: religiosity and the path to God, to the knowledge of the world and man are individual for each person. Everyone goes to these goals in their own unique way: some rush to them immediately (Simeon the New Theologian). Others, on the contrary, go with difficulty, for a long time looking for a direct path (say, the path to God of Abr. Augustine, Gregory Palamas). And some in general, almost from the first steps in life, go in the opposite direction and never come to the knowledge of God, the world and man. As you can see, the paths are diverse. But nevertheless there is something united in them.

The unity of the religious method in a variety of ways and techniques leading to one goal - to the knowledge of God, the world and man. Its unity could be expressed in the words: explaining the supernatural in natural ways... And man cannot explain the supernatural in any other way than the natural. Therefore, it is legitimate to talk about unified religious method knowledge based on natural methods.

A.S. Khomyakov noted one essential feature of the study of religion: “... the process of research, as applied to questions of faith, borrows its property from it and completely differs from research in the ordinary sense of the word. First, in the field of faith, the world to be investigated is not the world external to man; for man himself and the whole man with the whole integrity of reason and will constitute an essential part of him. Secondly, research in the field of faith presupposes some basic data, moral or rational, that are beyond any doubt for the soul, so that research is nothing more than a process of meaningful disclosure of these data.

Khomyakov sees the interaction of scientific and religious methods of cognition. He says in this regard: “For the Orthodox Church, the totality of these data embraces the whole world with all the phenomena of human life, and the entire word of God, both written and expressed by the dogmatic universal Tradition ... the very study in the field of faith, both in terms of the diversity of the data subject to it, so also because its goal lies in living truth, and not only logical, requires the use of all mental forces in action, in will and in reason, and, moreover, it also requires an internal investigation of these forces themselves. He should, so to speak, take into account not only the visible world, but also the strength and purity of the organ of vision. "

Both theological and practical methods of cognition in the early years of Christianity received an apt description: Clement of Alexandria and Origen gave a common name to the religious method - allegorical. Indeed, both in the scriptures and in church services there is a lot of conditional, poetic, one might say theatrical. In science, the dominant position is occupied by logic, reasoning, proof, mathematical justification, experiment; in religion - an image, comparison, allegory, allegory. Dry, boring moral admonitions leave people indifferent to sermons. The attractive aspects of the allegorical method are obvious: an aphorism, a parable, an image psychologically contain much more content than they express. Allegory often has the character of hyperbole, when an ordinary fact of life takes on the meaning of universality, divinity. This feature of the religious method was noted by A.S. Khomyakov, P.A. Florensky. The methods of religious thinking, wrote Florensky, "are somewhat reminiscent of poetry, folk poetry." In his book At the Divides of Thought, he emphasizes: “The symbolic nature of religious thinking is its essence. This is not a system of a philosophical order. Any accusation of rational inconsistency is a complete misunderstanding. Unification is given from within. " This is how Russian Orthodox theology differs significantly from Western theology. In the West, man is a servant of God and nothing more. In Russian Orthodox theology, he is a creator.

Russian theologians give their own interpretation of Holy Scripture. ON. Berdyaev writes:
“In the Holy Scriptures we do not find revelation about human creativity. It is not revealed, but hidden by God. " “The boldness of creativity was for me the fulfillment of the will of God, but the will is not open, but hidden ... An unusually daring idea that God needs a man, a man's answer, a man's creativity. But without this boldness, the revelation of God-manhood loses its meaning. " These views of the Russian philosopher are full of optimism, instill in people faith in the meaning of human life, open up to him the prospect of creativity, including after the divine judgment. The allegorical method of cognition received an original interpretation in the book by I.A. Ilyin's "Axioms of Religious Experience". Here he introduces the concept of "heartless, insensible contemplation", confirming its reality with allegorical arguments: the icon is revered as a "real shrine", as a "visible reminder of God", as a "call to Him"; the icon is like a "door to God"; it symbolizes the Divine Object, “giving a person the perception of“ absent and invisible, but as if present and visible ”; the icon is the embodiment of “sensual prayer meditation,” and so on.

The religious method of cognition largely depends on the nature of the subject. Priest P.A. Florensky: “The method of cognition is determined knowable". According to Florensky, thinking is objective. It is not material (modern scientists already have data on the “materiality” of thinking), but objectively, it is embedded in the human gene pool. Therefore, Florensky develops his thought about the determining role of the object in cognition: “The whole point is in objectivity ... of thinking: the subject of cognition is not constructed by means and evidence, and therefore it is not from them that it is comprehended, as is the case in subjective thinking, but, on the contrary, he himself , although not analyzed, from the very beginning serves as an emphasis of thought. "

The method of cognition in any field, including in religion, presupposes an almost identical process, which includes the analysis of the state of the object, its assessment, on the basis of this goal setting, selection of specific means and methods, conclusions and conclusions. The religious method of cognition in this respect is no different from the scientific one. Here, there is a mutual influence of two spiritual spheres. Vladimir Soloviev in his fundamental work “Justification of Good” very clearly describes the process of cognition in the Christian religion: “... Christianity (and it is one) is affirmed on the idea of ​​a truly perfect person and a perfect society and, therefore, promises to fulfill the requirement of true infinity inherent in our consciousness ... To achieve this goal, it is necessary, first of all, to stop being satisfied with a limited and unworthy reality - it is necessary to renounce it ... This is only the first step ... stopping at it, a person receives only emptiness ... for this, I must first understand or assimilate the very idea of ​​a worthy being - this is the second step represented by idealism ... It is clear that one cannot stop here, because truth is only conceivable, not realizable, does not fill all life, is not what required is not absolute perfection. The third and final step that we can take thanks to Christianity is the positive realization of positive being in everything. " The scheme of religious knowledge proposed by V.S. Soloviev, is very similar to the Hegelian general scientific scheme, which V.I. Lenin put it in the following words: “Human consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but also creates it. The world does not satisfy man, and man, by his action, decides to change it. The result of an action is a test of subjective cognition and a criterion of true-existing objectivity. " Soloviev limits the process of cognition only to religion, its specific confession, Hegel and Lenin extend it to the whole world. Thus, in this case, religious knowledge merges with scientific knowledge.

Home, one might say integral goal Orthodox theology - absolute perfection in the person of God and in the form of the kingdom of God. "Absolute perfection" - idee fix V.S. Solovyov. He is convinced that the kingdom of God is possible on earth. This idea literally permeates through his Justification of Good. He writes in one place: “Logically developed from religious sensation, of course, the moral principle not only presents its fullness of good ... as an idea or demand, but also reveals the actual forces contained in it, realizing this demand, creating a perfect moral order, or the Kingdom of God ... ". But if there is an ultimate goal - the absolutely perfect Kingdom of God on earth - then there is an end to development, which means death. Soloviev understands this, but cannot stop. He offers the ordinary mortal man the highest ideal, to which he must be equal, judge himself by the yardstick of the ideal of a higher being.

The ideal exists in the soul of any person, both a believer and an unbeliever. This is the image of an ideal person or a social ideal that incorporates ideas about something perfect. The ideal possesses great unifying and motive power. It arises objectively, as the need of people to arrange their lives in the best possible way. There is nothing religious about such an ideal. But in its psychological essence, it coincides with the religious ideal. However, one must understand that the ideal is not eternal, capable of continuous self-development.

Earthly goals are always relative and tied to the specific historical needs of earthly people. This was well understood by Hegel, who said that earthly goals are always limited. The highest goal of the spirit is thinking. God is thinking. But the achievement of this highest goal is inaccessible to a person, therefore he always mixes some comparisons, similarities with his desires, ideas. “There are many such forms in religion,” the famous philosopher writes, “which, as we know, should not be understood in their direct rational meaning. So, for example, "son", "birth" are only images borrowed from natural relations, and it is perfectly clear to us that they should not be understood in their immediacy; rather, their meaning lies in the fact that only approximate attitude ... Further, for us it is quite obvious that the mention of God's anger, his regret, vengeance should be understood not in the literal sense, it is just a likeness, a comparison ... ”. “… In the conception of the creation of the world, God is on one side for himself, and the world on the other, the connection of both sides is not put in the form of necessity. This connection finds its expression either in an analogy from the life of nature and natural events, or, if it is defined as a creation, this act takes on the character of something completely extraordinary and incomprehensible. " It is clear that Hegel is not talking about the scientific method of cognizing religion, but, according to Origen's definition, about the allegorical method. There are no absolute goals in nature: in the course of achieving one goal, another, higher and richer, arises; after its realization, an even higher and richer one appears. And so on ad infinitum. The world is so diverse and changeable that the human mind is unable to foresee not only the final, absolutely perfect goals, but even the goals of the coming decades. Therefore, absolute knowledge of the world, God is an unattainable goal. In this sense, St. Simeon, A.S. Khomyakov and I.A. Ilyin, when they assert: the desire to know God is meaningless and there is no need to strive for this.

Religious philosophers and theologians have worked a lot on the principles of religious knowledge, thereby contributing to the identification and substantiation of the scientific theory of knowledge. One of the effective principles of cognition is consistency, the honor of the discovery of which is attributed to the modern Italian philosopher L. Bertalanfi. He really did a lot to develop it. But in the works of Russian philosophers A.S. Khomyakov (a hundred years before Bertalanfi), V.S. Soloviev (about half a century earlier than L. Bertalanffy's generalizing work "General Theory of Systems"), Russian religious philosophers gave a clear idea of ​​the essence of the systemic method as applied to religion. In the two-volume edition of V.S. Solovyov, there is an essay on the life of the philosopher, written by A.F. Losev, where he gives an account of the systemic method of the great Russian thinker. Empiricism or the material principle of morality, traditional realism and sensationalism, rationalistic metaphysics, economic life and political life, religion are one-sided, or opposite to each other, suffer from abstraction, rationality ...

“Truth ... is possible only if we recognize all reality, taking it as a whole, that is, as generalized as possible and as specific as possible. This means that truth is a being, taken in its absolute unity and in its absolute plurality. In other words, truth is all-being. " The terminology "not systemic", but the essence of the systemic method is presented as fully and expressively as possible.

It was the religious philosophers who noticed and convincingly demonstrated the inadequacy of the scientific method of cognition. A.S. Khomyakov back in the thirties of the nineteenth century. wrote: "There is no doubt that a proof based on a strict formula is less controversial than others and rather gives the truth the right of citizenship in the field of knowledge." But in the knowledge of reality, artistic, poetic methods play a significant role, in particular the traditions and beliefs of the people: "... more important than any material signs, any political system, any relations of citizens among themselves are the traditions and beliefs of the people themselves." The same idea was expressed almost a century later by P.A. Florensky.

A very important (and in some cases the only) method of religious knowledge was collective development method fundamental tenets of faith. The Indians were the first to use this method. Its founder was Badarayana (c. V century BC). His merit before the Indian people is that he gave the first collection of the ancients ved, created Vedanta . He also proposed the first methods of researching the Vedas. In the Vedas, there were two main themes - ritual and Brahman. The research on the ritual was called the "First Investigation." And the study of texts about Brahman, which implied a ritual behind it, was called "Late / Higher Research", or Vedanta... At first, the Vedas were classified according to topics: for example, the topic of sacrifices, accompanied by judgments about the problems raised in this topic. In the course of such work, principles of interpretation were developed, on the basis of which “ thematic method of discussion ", method " adhikarana ", when different views are presented on each topic with arguments for and against, as well as a final judgment.

Veda- an ancient Indian legend.

Vedanta- a systematized collection of Indian Vedas about the beginning and development of the world, nature, man.

In Europe, collective methods of religious knowledge have developed in the form of ecumenical councils. Councils were usually convened when discussions on any essential questions of faith could not take shape on a daily basis. In the third century, a strong heresy appeared in Christianity, named after its founder Arius - Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ. All discussions with Ariy did not bring any results. He insisted that God the Father and God the Son are different entities, God the Son is subordinate to God the Father, is a product of God the Father. Then, in 325, the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea was convened, the main theme of which was the struggle against Arianism and the development of the fundamental Christian dogma (or otherwise - the symbol of faith) about the Holy Trinity. The council rejected Arianism, found the term "homousios", which meant "unanimity", "consubstantiality" of God the Father and God the Son. Although the term made it possible for a multivariate interpretation of "homousios", nevertheless, God the Father, God the Son handed over a more or less convincing argument into the hands of the supporters of the unity of hypostases. At other ecumenical councils - Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), the dogma of the Holy Spirit was approved. Thus, at the Ecumenical Councils 325-451. the Christian meaning of faith in the Holy Trinity was formed, representing the consubstantiality of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. At the ecumenical councils, other important issues of Christianity were also resolved.

Of course, these councils can be interpreted as a manifestation of the will of God, how much in Christianity receives just such an explanation. But at the same time, consciousness does not leave the thought that many divine questions were decided on earth, by simple voting. This, in particular, is confirmed by the Orthodox art critic I.K. Yazykov: “In Byzantium, since the time of the Ecumenical Councils, it was customary to prove their point of view publicly, theological disputes were conducted there constantly, were brought to councils, disputes, squares, formed a rich polemical literature. There was no tradition of theological dialogue in Russia, which came to Byzantium from the ancient heritage. In Russia, theology was different - liturgical life, monastic obedience, icon painting were the main forms of theology. "

The religious method absorbs all previously acquired knowledge and clothe it in a religious form. P.A. Florensky called the process of cognition "round thinking", borrowing this image from the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides. “Round thinking” does not reveal the truth immediately, but as the thought rotates around the subject: the researcher “unexpectedly opens new approaches from focus to focus ... ". He admitted the existence of "whirlpools of thought" "in their frank pre-scientific, pre-systemic character." Without them, "without the source keys of thought flowing from the depths of pre-thought ... it is impossible to understand large systems." Florensky also compared the religious method with the surf: "Themes go and return, and again go, and again come back, and, enriching themselves, each time filled with new content and the juice of life ...". But all the themes are interconnected: “in the new ones, the old ones, the former ones, sound ... In the addition of the whole, each theme turns out to be connected in one way or another with each other ... The connecting relationships here are multiple, vital and organic ...”. It seems that these images accurately convey the essence of not only religious, but also scientific methods of cognition.

“In Him (in God) we live, and move, and exist, just as some of your poets said: we are His and our kind” ().

Introduction. - Natural ways of knowing God. - The value of artistic creativity for the religious thought of the middle-educated classes. - Significant and e artistic creation for philosophers and theologians. - Philosophical preconditions for the knowledge of God. - 1. Artistic creation, as the interpretation of nature and Deity in terms of the human spirit. - Conditions for artistic creation. - Flair and sympathetic understanding of the inner life of nature. - Isomorphism of the artist's soul with the soul of every person. - Ability of plastic reproduction of nature and spirit. - An artist, as the leader of the knowledge of God. - 2. Artistic creation as a kind of natural Divine revelation. - Opinions about this subject of Orthodox theologians. - Historical, philosophical, archaeological and dogmatic data. - The teaching of St. Scriptures and Sts. fathers. - The epistemological legal capacity of artistic creativity, as a postulate of Christian theism.

Natural knowledge of God has many ways and forms. As in ancient times they said: "All roads lead to Rome", so we could say: "All paths of human thought will lead to God" of a conscientious seeker of truth. The metaphysician, reflecting on the essence and foundations of the universe, comes to the recognition and confession of the highest principle and first cause - God; the natural scientist, delving into the expediency of organic and inorganic processes of nature, recognizes in them the hand of the Creator and the Provider; the historian, contemplating the fate of peoples and human opinions and teachings, will come to the same confession; the moralist, looking for the foundations of conscience, finds them in God. May the aesthetics be allowed to add their voice to this chorus of natural testimonies of God.

A student of the laws and conditions of artistic creation can easily notice that these conditions are most favorable for the poet to become a guide to the universal human consciousness of religious truth. A good poet, no less a philosopher, can do a good service to the church. Philosophical and strictly scientific defense and substantiation of the general truths of religion are not always available to the secondary educated classes. And yet the need for a natural reinforcement of their religious faith exists for them, for the waves of modern unbelief and denial with their blows often shake their consciences. How to be so hesitant? Engage in a deep and serious study of philosophy, natural science and ethics? Yes, that would be the most reliable and sure way; but there can be no doubt that this will be completely beyond the power of the needy and will only frighten him with its impracticability. It is in such and such cases that it will be very useful for him to understand for himself the meaning for the religious knowledge of poets and artists. Let him get to know these luminaries of intuitive thinking, while keeping in mind their importance along with philosophers and scientists, and he can be sure that where years of stubborn and intense mental work would be required from his initiative, several good artists with a good direction.

But it is not only for the middle-educated classes that it is useful to know the indicated meaning of artistic creation. It is also necessary to find out this meaning for people who are philosophically and theologically educated.

It is known that modern philosophical thought often suffers greatly from the instability of its basic principles, the precariousness and unreliability of methods, the paucity of conclusions and distrust of its own strength; - we say this, of course, not about all modern philosophical trends, but we mean mainly representatives of the so-called relativism, which is so widespread both abroad and here in Russia. A natural consequence of this state of affairs is religious skepticism: the futility of philosophical searches for the highest truth sometimes pushes a person to doubt its very existence. In philosophical speculation, such people see only a special kind of poetry (Lange), and see religious ideas as a product of a kind of artistic fiction, representing only the idealization of human nature (Feuerbach, Renan). It would be timely for such thinkers to recall two truths: 1) that in addition to methodological, philosophical knowledge, which often chooses in its search for truth such paths that do not lead it to the desired goal, there is something else, immediate or intuitive, which has lived from time immemorial and humanity lives - knowledge that existed before science and philosophy and which, according to the teaching of the Apostle Paul, was sufficient to convince in the most general and basic religious truths (;); - 2) that if in philosophical and religious knowledge there are many features that make it akin to artistic creativity, this does not in the least undermine its reliability, because artistic creativity, under certain conditions, has full legal capacity.

There is, however, along with the philosophical trends of a relativistic or skeptical kind, and a sound philosophy that knows how to achieve lasting results and develops in full agreement with religious truth. The main toners of this philosophy are in Russia, and for the most part abroad, figures of higher theological education. And they, as we said, need to clearly understand for themselves the relationship of artistic creation to religious knowledge; knowing this attitude, they can often supplement their argumentation with data from a field that would otherwise be easily ignored and thus acquire an extra criterion for testing their conclusions.

So, the task of our research will be to determine the meaning of artistic creation as an auxiliary means in the philosophical research and substantiation of religious truth. This means, we repeat, is much less reliable and durable than strictly methodical, philosophical or scientific research; For a thinker who wants to start exploring the foundations of natural knowledge of God, we would in no case recommend replacing his philosophical work: it can only serve as a natural and useful supplement to it.

A philosophical study of the foundations of natural knowledge of God shows us that the latter, for its reliability, needs the recognition of certain epistemological, ontological and metaphysical premises. These are the prerequisites: a) the reality of the external world; b) objective knowledge of the category of causality; c) the real meaning of the idea of ​​expediency (epistemological prerequisites); d) cosmomorphism of the cognizing subject; e) human theomorphism (ontological premises), and f) the reality of the moral world order (metaphysical premises). In order for artistic creation to serve the cause of natural knowledge of God, it is necessary that, in one way or another, it affirms the truth of these premises. Indeed, we can find in the most subjective conditions of artistic creation the actual embodiment of both the metaphysical and both ontological principles that form the real condition for the cognizability of the Divine. And then it can be shown from the outside that the legal capacity of creativity and intuition in the knowledge of God is a postulate of religious consciousness. We will look at the case from each of these sides.

I.

Cognition of the Divine is possible only from the world and man, reflecting in themselves the perfections of their Creator. If the difficulty of philosophical knowledge of God is generated by the inadequacy and incompleteness of our scientific understanding of nature and man, then, obviously, a poet can be a guide to the knowledge of the Divine only if he perfectly has the ability to penetrate and reproduce both the life of nature and the life of the human spirit. This image should be so vivid and effective as to expel from a person that very involuntary cry of feeling, which, according to Victor Hugo, is usually the most sincere and truthful confession of the Divine:

But since we can understand nature too, only by measuring it with the norms of our spirit, it is necessary that the poet could spiritualize nature, make it speak to us in a "living, understandable language" - "with the voice of the heart", that is, he could to translate the broadcasting of nature about the glory of God into the language of our feelings; - only under this condition and it is possible that -

"A healthy heart in itself will reflect the world and the Creator," as Schiller says. Thus, for the very possibility of a poet to become, as Guyot puts it, a “priest of the masses” and “to introduce something irrefutable into our minds,” three things are necessary: ​​1) a flair and a sympathetic understanding of nature, 2) isomorphism or affinity of the artist's soul with the soul of everyone human and 3) the ability of plastic reproduction of one and the other in homogeneous forms, mainly in the forms of the human spirit. All three of these properties have always distinguished the best artists.

1) A feeling and sympathetic understanding of the inner life of nature is such a necessary moment of knowledge of God that without it heaven does not at all tell the glory of God:

“Where is your deity? I appeal to nature:

Only if a poet carries a living image of the world in his chest can he show people God in nature.

“And in the spirit of a singer, as if in clean glass,

The whole world reflected blooming:

He is mature, which has come true on earth for centuries,

That the age hides the coming one;

He sat in the ancient council of the gods,

And he listened to the secret movements of creation.

Light and perfectly able to develop

A picture of a luxurious life

And by the power of art to turn

The earthly dwelling of the fatherland;

Does he enter a hut, or a deserted

With him are the gods and the whole divine paradise "

This sensitive understanding of nature in poets is very strongly developed and they themselves are considered the first condition for successful creativity. Goethe says, "that he would be blind and with seeing eyes, and any study would be a waste of work if he did not carry the whole world inside himself in advance." I saw, while we, ordinary people, often incorrectly simply remember even what we have seen. “Like Cuvier, E. said, when he comprehended the meaning of animal organization, he could determine from one bone which animal it belonged to, and build his whole figure from it, - this is how the genius artist acts: he recognizes the lion by the claw, as he put it Phidias, that is, according to individual features of the landscape, he immediately outlines the image of the whole, which turns out to be completely consistent with reality. " So Schiller, in his tragedy "Wilhelm Tell", depicted Switzerland based on sketches by Goethe and John Müller, and in his picture there was not a single foreign feature, nothing significant in Alpine nature was omitted, and the whole circle and setting were in full harmony with the action. Also famous songs of Goethe: "Wanderer" and "Are you ripe for the land" were written before he saw Italy.

The poet reveals the same deep understanding of historical reality. Shakespeare, from the readings of Plutarch's biographies and the English Chronicle, recognized some historical features that served as a guide to comprehending the history of the times of Caesar, Charles V, Henry III, and from his own inner contemplation made a living image of these times, with amazing fidelity to the details of the whole.

Gogol can serve as the best proof that it depends on poetic talent, and not on any other reasons. When the creative power began to fade in his soul, which happened soon after he published the first part of Dead Souls, he in vain tried to make up for this deficiency by studying Russia; he even announced a general cry for Russian people of all ranks to write and send to him their confessions and observation notes, and there were many sympathetic answers to this cry, but all the information collected in this way did not serve anything. The pale chapters of the second part of Dead Souls convince us that without creative power in poetry no amount of information helps.

And the artists themselves, in this correct understanding of reality, see their own peculiarity in comparison with ordinary people. “I am striving, said George Elliot,“ only to correctly represent the people and things that are reflected in my mind; I consider myself obliged to show you this reflection as it is in me, as sincerely as if I were on the witness stand, giving my testimony under oath. " Some writers on the psychology of creativity tried to give this property of artists a physiological explanation and spoke about the special development of their memory. Think so - French writer Paul Cyrio and after him our - Boborykin .

Without going into the discussion of this opinion, we note that in this case it also confirms our idea. - Pupils of the school of painting at first, as you know, are taught for a very long time to "look", that is, just to truthfully notice what is in reality. Here a curious fact, noticed by the artists, is revealed - that ordinary people, for the most part, do not know how to look at all! “A lot of people don't see,” says Théophile Gaultier. - For example, out of 25 persons who enter here, there are no three who distinguish the color of the paper! Here, for example, X; he will not see whether this table is round or rectangular ... All my dignity is that I am a person for whom the visible world exists ".

It was this artist's sensitivity to reality that gave Schiller the right to say:

“Nature and genius have been and will be in close alliance:

What he promises you, she will faithfully fulfill! "

This subtle observation, of course, depends a lot on the skill and acuteness of the external senses; and as such, it is found even among people devoid of any artistic talent. A clever appraiser or an experienced recorder is no worse than an artist to notice every detail - the color of the paper, the shape of the table, etc. But what gives the artist an understanding of reality is the power of sympathetic feeling. It is known that passions strongly influence the ability of external perception. It is often said about love and jealousy that they blind. But with no less right we can say about them that they refine their eyesight and, in general, observation. The lover will grasp every detail concerning the loved one. A jealous person, more carefully than any investigator, will note every little thing and give it a place in the chain of his conclusions. That is why artists always talk about love for nature.

“Mother Nature! You are dearer to us

And Victor Hugo directly proclaims:

„….Comprendre, c'est aimer.

Les plaines où le ciel aide l'herbe a germer,

L'eau, les prés, sont autant de phrases où le sage

Voit serpenter des sens qu'il saisit au passage .. "

And this is eminently true. Even in science, success is conditioned by love of the subject. This love of nature, according to the artists, is the only one capable of making out the language of nature. The more fiery it is, the more complete the understanding. This is how one of the greatest poets describes this awakening of love for nature and the associated penetration into the inner life of nature:

"How ancient to its creation

Pygmalion knew love,

And was the fire of his desire

Cold marble revives

So full of youthful passion

I embraced nature with a prayer -

And she was not left without participation,

She spoke to me

In a lively, understandable language;

Then all creation was resurrected,

Everything became full of being;

I understood life in a flower, in a plant,

That this image cannot be ignored as a product of romantic exaggeration can be seen from the fact that similar feelings can excite, for example, the most real artist of our time, Emile Zola. One of his heroes, in which he personifies himself, one summer day in the village, leaning on the grass, talks about literature. “He fell on his back, stretched out his hands in the grass, as if he wanted to enter the ground,” at first he laughed and joked, and ended with such a cry of ardent conviction: “Ah! kind land, take me a common mother, the only source of life! you are eternal, immortal, where the soul of the world turns, this sop, spreading even into stones and which makes the trees our big, motionless brothers! ... Yes, I want to get lost in you, I feel you under my members, embracing and igniting me; you alone will be in my work, as the first force, as a means and end, a huge ark, where all things are animated by the breath of all creatures! ... Isn't it stupid that each of us has a soul when there is this great soul ?! " , which fills the artist's soul, Balzac calls "motherly love". If it is true that "a mother's heart is a prophet", then it is clear what a subtle understanding of reality poets should have. Genius, says Guyot, is the power of love ... A genius must be carried away by everyone and everyone in order to understand everything.

2) A person can cognize the properties of the Deity in the mirror of his spirit, where the Lord has imprinted his image. But this image becomes clear for the person himself, - only actually (effectively) incarnating in his spiritual life, in the structure of his feelings, that is, becoming a "likeness" of God; and this is understandable: in a person who is negligent about his moral success, the image of God is darkened - the mirror of his spirit (cf.) is, as it were, covered with a coating of moral dust and ceases to reflect anything in himself. Only the pure in heart can see God (); and the “darkened heart”, instead of mentally changing the properties of its spirit according to ideal norms, discarding everything that is perishable and limited, and thus create for itself a concept of God that corresponds to reality, is capable of the opposite, “to change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image similar to perishable person "().

Therefore, it is necessary that a person can perceive the ideal seed hidden in him not through his direct, subjective (personal) experience, but through objective experience. It is necessary to show a person himself, from his best sides, which he himself may, perhaps, not even suspect. This is performed by the artist: he objectifies before a person the most intimate and at the same time the most sublime movements of his spirit and by this, so to speak, brings into clarity the premises of the knowledge of God. In this respect, the artist's activity is useful even for people with a pure heart - on the one hand, facilitating their self-observation, and on the other, giving a correction (amendment) to his empirical interpretation.

But sometimes it is not enough to reproduce the pictures of the human spirit. Inferences and inferences drawn from these pictures are essentially inductive inferences. And we know that such conclusions are generally difficult for conscious thinking. This means that in such cases one of two things turns out to be necessary - either that the work of art should affect the feeling of a person as much as possible and many-sided, and the conclusion, thus, would be an involuntary response of the soul, or - so that the artist himself suggested to the person the desired conclusion, which would have amazed him with its obviousness.

Obviously, an artist, along with an understanding of nature, must have a complete understanding of the human soul. "The artist, says Amfitheatrov, himself, as a man, bears within himself the grain and essence of man and humanity," "according to the feelings and impulses of his heart, he embraces the universal human." It is at this point that we arrive at the assertion of the isomorphism of the artist's soul with the soul of every person.

They often say, in ordinary language: take my place, take the place of another, and indeed, each without much effort can be transferred to the external conditions in which the other person is. But, according to Guyot, “the essence of poetic and artistic genius is that he can detach himself not only from the external conditions that surround us, but also from the internal conditions of upbringing, circumstances of birth and moral environment, even from gender, from acquired virtues and disadvantages: it consists in losing your personality and guessing in yourself, between all the secondary phenomena, the primitive spark of life and will. Having simplified himself, in this way, the artist transfers this life, which he feels in himself, not only into the frame where another person moves, or into the body of another, but, so to speak, into the very heart of another being. Hence the well-known rule that an artist or poet must experience the life of his hero, and experience it not superficially, but so deeply, as if he really entered it. But you cannot give life otherwise than by borrowing it from your own supply. Thus, an artist gifted with a strong imagination must have a sufficiently intense life to animate in turn each of the faces that he creates, without making any of them a simple reproduction, a copy of herself. To create by the power of one of his personality another, and an original life - such is the task that all creativity must solve.

With this ability, the artist rises above every most experienced psychologist and, moreover, an ordinary observer. “What is a poet? - say Gabrielle Seail, - this is a sympathetic vibrating soul, taking a chord with all sorts of human feelings, which are reflected in it. A poet is a person who surrenders to all passions and expresses them as they are experienced; it is an echo that repeats our inner motives (chants), but adds its powerful sonority to them. "

They say: “Omne individunm ineffabile”. This saying contains the recognition of the impotence of not only ordinary, but also scientific thought to penetrate into the inner sanctuary of the spirit. But the artist renounces this impotence. In this he is often ahead of science. Goethe gave a brilliant example of this in his Werther. Werther's suicide was found unnatural, psychologically implausible, and therefore Goethe was reprimanded for not leading his hero to a clearer look, to a calmer feeling and a calm existence after his grief. But now the famous psychiatrist Maudsley, after investigating the matter, found that suicide was the inevitable and natural end of this kind of sorrow. This is the final explosion of a whole series of antecedents that all prepare it; it is just as necessary and as fatal an event as a flower, of which an insect has eaten the very core. “Suicide or insanity is the natural end of a person who is gifted with the right sensitivity, and whose weak will is unable to cope with the ordeals of life,” says Maudsley. There is no need to expand on the deep psychiatric knowledge of Shakespeare, which scientists still amaze with.

3) The ability to grasp the inner essence of nature and the human spirit, in order to be the basis of the real rights of artists to become "priests of the masses", interpreters of the Divine, must be combined with the ability to express both nature and spirit in such forms that would most surely cause those the very feelings, in which implicite are contained the induction of knowledge of God.

If the cognition of an object is possible for philosophy only under the condition of either its identity, or at least similarity with the subject, that is, under the condition that the forms and laws of thought are at the same time the laws and forms of the objective existence of things, then the intuitive or direct cognition, which we have recognized as essentially homogeneous with methodical cognition, is obviously also possible only under this condition. If the cosmomorphism of man is a condition for cognizing nature, then the opposite is also true - that nature must be anthropomorphized in order to be understood. The human spirit knows only itself directly. Any other knowledge is possible insofar as it is reducible to immediate. Hence the need for the poet to be able to express nature in terms of the human spirit.

The requirement put forward now is not only fulfilled in art, but even, as it turns out, constitutes its very essence. “The world in fantasy, says Seail, already takes on something human; but that which in the world is of particular interest to man is man himself. " Creativity, in his opinion, would be impossible if we did not personify, did not anthropomorphize nature. “For the imagination, we read from him, nature is not a thing - it is a face, a sympathetic being. When they imitate signs expressing a feeling, they evoke an image of this feeling in themselves and only through this they more or less recognize it. This is a consequence of the law, by virtue of which every image seeks to be realized ”. To understand nature, it is necessary to imitate the movements that would take place in it if it were a living humanoid person. And in order for this to be possible, one must be able to discover in her an analogy with a person, to give a general interpretation of her phenomena in the image of the movements of the spirit, that is, for each detail to find something corresponding or correlative in mental life. That is why Bacon rightly said: “Ars est homo additus naturae”.

An artist, according to Seail, does not even know nature like a scientist in its monotonous, abstract, geometric laws; he cognizes - by loving her in her diverse and living forms. To be an artist means, first of all, to live with feelings, to enjoy and suffer from everything: from sound, from light, from colors, from wavy lines, from any harmony and any dissonance. When such a complete responsiveness of the human heart to natural phenomena is established that for each of the latter there will be a permanent representative or substitute in the form of a specifically defined, purely human feeling, then only the interpretation of nature will become possible. And by creating in the souls of other people the same associations between shades of feeling and the features of objective phenomena that were established in his own soul, the artist makes nature understandable for other people. He, so to speak, creates here a grammar and lexicon for the language of nature, with which even an ordinary mortal will be able to understand her broadcast. Imagine being given the most detailed, photographically accurate description, for example, of an Italian landscape at sunset; everything is indicated here - the shades of colors according to the spectrometer, the temperature according to the Celsius thermometer, the intensity of light according to the photometer, etc. And you still will not feel anything, reading this detailed protocol, you will not understand life in this picture. But when an artist comes and adds from himself to this long description just a few strokes, and the picture immediately sparkled for you with the fire of life, and dumb nature acquired a language ... But what did the artist do? - he just said to you: “Remember how the velvet hand of your beloved caressed you, how you drank in the scent of her breath, how her tender radiant gaze penetrated your soul, making every string of your heart vibrate ... your face will scent with myrtle and lemons, and a brilliant ray of the sun, lost in the boundless blue of the sky, which conceals its sharpness, at once and caresses, and permeates you. " The artist here only established parallelism, correlated elements of objective natural phenomena with subjective elements of feeling. Here, as in the understanding of a foreign language, the whole task is to find the corresponding own words for the foreign words. When this task is completed, understanding is already accomplished without hindrance. Thus, cognizing nature, we do not “penetrate”, as they usually say - this is not true - but we transfer it into ourselves, from the elements of our spirit we create an image of nature. "If, says the same Seail, it was necessary to leave the spirit in order to enter nature, it would be closed to us forever." - “To animate nature, to say Guyot, means - to get to the truth, because life is in everything, - life and also effort. The desire to live, meeting now favorable conditions, now unfavorable, brings with it everywhere an embryo of pleasure and suffering, and we can even regret the flower. From my window I see a large rose bush: a small bud of a large white rose is half torn from the stem, only three fibers of the bark hold you on it. But a few drops of rain - and you bloomed. A flower without hope, you cannot be fruitful, but you smell and make you happy, - a sad flower that, before fading, you smile! "

One bewilderment can easily arise here. Where, it will be asked, is the guarantee that the artists give a real interpretation of nature, and do not establish an arbitrary analogy between it and man, which in another case can be established in a completely different form? - Such a guarantee, in our opinion, is the impossibility of unconditional arbitrariness in poetic convergence, experienced by the best artists and explained by literary criticism. Animation of nature is only legitimate when the artist measures the degrees of life with which he endows her. “Poetry, says Guyot, is allowed to accelerate the evolution of nature, but not to change it ... it penetrates and flows everywhere, its level rises, however, only gradually, following the correct canalization. In metaphors, which should only be rational metamorphoses, symbols of the general transformation of things, the poet can skip some of the imperceptible stages of life, but he cannot skip them arbitrarily ... Hence the absurdity of the mythology of savages and some romantic or "Parnassian" poets who think animate the ocean or thunder, attributing thoughts to them and forcing them to reason with syllogisms. " Regarding the last remark, we consider it necessary to make an explanation that the ocean and thunder cannot be animated and rationality cannot be attributed to them, but it is not only possible, but also necessary to give them a spiritual meaning, instrumental. We, for example, do not see any unnaturalness in the following verses of Khomyakov:

“The earth trembles; on air

Thunder rushes from end to end.

That is God's voice: he judges the world.

Israel, my people! listen! "...

If the essence of poetic creativity consists in the anthropomorphization of nature, then it, vice versa, is the recognition of the cosmomorphism of man. Indeed, the best poets have always pointed to this metaphysical basis for their rights to personify or hypostatize the soulless. For example. Goethe, in a tone that did not allow even the possibility of a negative answer, asked:

„Ist nicht der Kern der Natur

He also owns this categorical statement: "Im Innern ist ein Vniversum ach!"

The cosmomorphism of the human spirit is professed by Sully Prudhomme, one of the most talented French poets of this century, when he decides to interpret the fate of man by analogy with the facts of nature. We find this in him, for example, in the poem - "Les Yeux", the most sincere and sincere of all his plays:

„Bleux ou noirs, tous aimés tous beaux,

Des yeux sans nombre ont vu l'aurore;

Ils dorment au fond des tombeaux;

Et le soleil se lève encore.

Les nuits, plus douces que les jours,

Ont enchanté des yeux sans nombre;

Les étoiles brillent toujouis,

Et les yeux se sont remplis d'ombre.

Oh! qu ils aient perdu le regard,

Non, non, cela n'est pas possible!

Ils se sont tournés quelque part

Vers ce qu'on nomme l'invisible;

Et comme les astres penchants,

Nous quittent, mais au ciel demeurent,

Ces prunelles ont leur couchânts,

Mais il n'est pas vrai qu'elle meurent:

Bleux ou noirs, tous aimés, tous beaux,

Ouverts à quelque immense aurore,

De l'autre coté des tombeaux

The poet was led to the idea of ​​the immortality of the soul by its analogy with the sun and the stars, objects of nature. - Victor Hugo also asserts this isomorphism of spirit and nature: “Bien lire l'univers, c'est bien lire la vie,” he says. And Byron expresses himself even more energetically: "Are not the mountains, waves and skies a part - of me and of my soul, as I of them?"

So, to the extent that nature is capable of conveying the glory of God to those who understand the language of its broadcasting, so artists can really be mediators of knowledge of God. Mute before the philosopher and scientist, who approach it with the chisel of analysis and the hammer of criticism, nature reveals its secrets to the artist, who approaches her with an open heart and with a tender prayer of love. And the artist is already retelling these revelations to people. Scientists have not yet learned how to read the book of nature, and only parse its individual words. This is similar to the reading that is possible with knowledge of one alphabet and prosody of the language and without familiarity with its syntax and etymology. Abstract scientific formulas tell us nothing about the life of nature. In this case, the artist, as a matter of fact, can reveal to the scientist himself for the first time the living meaning of his formulas. Schiller tells artists:

“What a brave thinker discovered in the world of knowledge,

You are conquered, openly only through you.

All those treasures that the mind that has received its sight has gathered,

The thinker himself will understand from your only hands.

Lead his mysterious path

On the wonderful staircase of the poetry of the saint,

So that at the end of times the impulse is still alive,

Another holy inspiration -

And the man fell into rapture -

Knowing the truth in nature, the artist contemplates the Creator in the harmony of nature, and therefore can say to Him:

"My gaze, Thy bright face beheld with delight,

My ear heard the harmony of your worlds. "

Man knows God not only from nature, but also from his own spirit. We have already said that for a person to be able to contemplate the image of God in himself, it is necessary that the artist shows the person himself from his best, ideal sides. This will give the premises of the knowledge of God, and the person himself will only have to draw a conclusion. But then we pointed to the difficulty of this conclusion (its inductive nature) and to the sometimes arising need for the artist himself to draw the conclusion, and the person would only agree with it with all sincerity, recognize its truth. This case, of course, cannot be repeated often. It can only take place in relation to very rational natures; - inductions are especially difficult for conscious thinking. But spontaneous natures, who do not mix the rational element with their aesthetic emotions, need little such prompting.

How does an artist draw these conclusions when they are needed? Here we must distinguish between two possible ways: one direct, - depending on the will and intention of the artist, the other - indirect, more determined by the general nature of the tasks pursued by art. In the first case, if a really talented artist consciously undertakes the propaganda of religious ideas, he will undoubtedly have tremendous success, because art has the ability to "introduce something irrefutable into the minds." If, unfortunately, we rarely see such cases, then it depends, on the one hand, on the fact that sometimes dozen talents and even, sometimes, absolutely mediocrity are taken to preach religious ideas.

Another way is that the artist will awaken in a person those feelings that form the penultimate link in a series of inductions (= aesthetic impressions), ending with the recognition of the Divine. One can feel all the charm of an artistic image, admire those high sides of the human spirit that are embodied in it, and still not draw the conclusion to which there is only one step from these impressions. Such natures are said to be too "objective" in their aesthetic emotions. Their aesthetic judgments remain judgments. They require some subjective effort to merge into inference proclaiming the confession of Deity; - demand that the very feeling that objectifies the ideal and the lofty that is in man, asserts his real correlate (that which corresponds to him in objective reality), that is, God, should be added. This objectifying feeling is primarily love. one is capable of successfully dispelling that epistemological fiction called solipsism, that is, one is capable of assuring us that our ideas about people refer to real people. - Then, in relation to the Divine, such an objectifying feeling is also sadness. He who has never grieved deeply about anything, who has never felt the sorrow of human existence, often forgets about God; he is able to pass by the most majestic wonders of nature, if not with indifference, then with a feeling of epicurean complacency, he, perhaps, will admire the beautiful, but - according to the same epicurean principle: "carre voluptates". Such people are not capable of strong and true love. But the one who grieved deeply and deeply, whose heart longs for consolation, he will not remain deaf to the messages about God of external nature and blind to the image of the Divine in his own soul. If he lacks natural sensitivity here, then in works of art he will find indications of the path to the Source of all consolation. The meaning of sorrow and suffering for the knowledge of God is very clearly and vividly revealed in the Psalter, in a book that at once contains both lyric poetry and Divine revelation, that is, it is doubly true. Love and sorrow are two guides to the knowledge of God. And if the artist, in addition to his two talents discussed above - the ability to understand and convey the life of nature and the ability to penetrate into the innermost curves of the human heart - also has the ability to teach people to love and grieve with truly human sorrow and love, then his mission is to be a prophet of the knowledge of God must be considered fulfilled. Are artists fulfilling this mission?

As for love, one might think that this question is not even pertinent, because if an artist must love the objects of his art in order to understand them, then, apparently, in ordinary people, to understand the artistic creation itself, love is also required. But such a consideration will not be entirely correct. An artist needs to love his subject so that he has the patience and perseverance to penetrate its meaning, which is often obscured by a mass of details not related to his main idea in his empirical setting. The connoisseur of art finds himself in a completely different position: the elements of reality are offered to him in such a combination that the idea clearly appears as itself; on his part, it is true, for her understanding, an imitation of those feelings that inspired the artist in the composition of certain details is required: but such imitation is not always so strong that this feeling is enough for more than just understanding a work of art, and a certain remainder would be obtained, which would later become the basis of some constant mood of life. Here we meet with simple "sympathy" in its broadest sense.

It seems to us that general considerations about the properties of aesthetic emotion in the present case will not be sufficient to prove the ability of artists to lead humanity to the knowledge of God. Some empirical guidelines will be far more important here. If we pay attention to the content of works of art of all ages, we will see that love and suffering give them the most grateful themes. For example, in the literature of our time, a rare novel and a rare drama do without love. The same must be said about the lyrics. On the other hand, pessimism constitutes such a predominant motive of modern poetry and the one closest to us in time and attracts so many of the best artistic forces under its banner that some literary critics even began to express the opinion that he is no longer a poet, who is not a pessimist, who does not take his plots from the area of ​​human suffering. If we then take into account that literary figures have always been aware of their, so to speak, social mission, their duty to influence society, contributing to its spiritual ennobling, awakening the best feelings in it - and in particular, they clearly begin to realize this now: then we we will easily understand that they can really lead people to the knowledge of God.

Love and suffering inspire the best poets of our century - and let us note this, they have always been the source of those religious motives that often sounded in their poetry. Regarding, for example, Lermontov, everyone already knows this: his "In a difficult moment of life", "When the yellowing cornfield is worried", "I, the Mother of God ...", etc. - things that are all too well known.

In Nadson, the most sorrowful pieces are always resolved in the end by prayer. Let us recall here, for example, the poem "My friend, my brother!" and “Christ! where are you Christ, crowned with flowers! "... There is also no need to remind that the works of FM Dostoevsky are all entirely the essence of the poetry of suffering that leads to God. In French literature, first-class poets - Alfred de Musset, Victor Hugo, Sully Prudhomme and others - were equally singers of love and suffering. And they all have a lot of plays that have a very strong religious feeling. Here are some examples for an excerpt, from which one can see the nature of the religious ideas of these poets. "The soul rises to the sky when you lose what you love." - "In a poor human soul the best thought is always unreliable, but a tear - it rolls and does not make mistakes." - “Doubt gnawed at the ground; we see either too much or too little. " "But the burden from the heart will fall when it is shed in tears." “Comfort me, this evening, I am languishing, I need hope; I need to live until dawn. " - "Oh, you (Christ) knew that in this life the only good is love and the only truth is suffering." - (Musset). - “Progress must believe in God. Good cannot have a godless minister. The atheist is the bad leader of the human race. " “This God, I confess, often had to raise doubts among the sages. So be it. But I still believe. Faith is the highest light ... .. The conscience that I feel in myself tells me that God has visited me. I can, reasoning falsely, put Him outside of heaven, but outside of myself - never. When I listen to the voice of my heart, I hear the conversation of two persons; with my soul there are two of us: he and me. " - “The seal of eternity also lies on the transitory; the modest flower that the thinker looks at is imbued with immensity, dark, azure and starry; we look at the fields, but we are delighted with God. The lily you admire blooms in your heart, and your soul is adorned with the roses you look at. " - "Friends! when the storm rages, my faith grows stronger. In a hurricane, I contemplate the consciousness of duty and faith in the truth, which flash like lightning. " “Oh, the essence of God is love. Man sometimes thinks that God like him has a soul striving to become outside the world - this immense scattering dust ... .. I know that God is not a soul, but a heart. , the focus of love of the whole world, brings all the threads of all roots into connection with its Divine nature. His tenderness knows no difference between a worm and a seraphim; and all boundless spaces are amazed that the heart, humiliated here on earth by the priests, has as many rays as there are living beings on earth. For God - to create, think, ponder, revive, sow, destroy, act, be and see, mean - love. " - "If it were not for someone who loves, the sun would have gone out." - "Man is a flying point, endowed with two wings: one wing is his thought, the other is love." "With my joy and my love, I will force God to reveal himself." - “No matter how unapproachable you are in the gloomy depths of your azure abyss, you stars, countless and endless reflections of God, - I am not afraid of foggy heights, I have wings” (V. Hugo). - "Each of us is a follower of some word that contains a deep thought." - Nimvrod says: "War"! And from the Ganges to Iliss swords shine and blood flows, "Love one another!" says Jesus, and this word shines for us forever in heaven, on flowers, in our renewed heart, like the radiance of endless love. " - “Moved, I cannot realize what moved me. I, under the spell, called myself heaven and it is difficult for me to check how much truth is in all this. " (Sully Prudhomme). - Already by these excerpts one can judge how much the religious understanding of modern society would have moved if all these ideas really liked him. It seems to us that these ideas are so deep and meaningful that they can be used to compose a whole religious worldview. If this is true, then it is necessary to recognize the right of artists to be the leaders of the knowledge of God.

Now we only have to answer one misunderstanding, which can very easily arise about the views we are developing. How can one explain the phenomenon that some poets are people of little religion, and others even completely atheists? - It seems to us that, in accordance with our views on the essence of artistic creativity, the only correct answer would be this: if artistic creativity is the transmission and excitement of emotions, and the knowledge that we receive is only a translation into a conscious form of that theoretical element, which implicite, in an open state, is in emotions, then, obviously, the irreligiousness of these poets is explained by the fact that their creativity stops halfway: they have feelings, they know how to express them and convey them to others, but they cannot or do not want to see that epistemological character, how these feelings differ. In other words, the poet's lack of religiosity must be explained by the imperfection of his artistic talent. From this point of view, we do not quite agree with Guyot, who says that in order to be a good poet, one must believe, have convictions. We find it necessary to reverse this attitude and say that in order to be a believer, a poet must first of all be good, that is, a complete poet. Guyot cites Rishnen as an example, who, in his words, "lacks conviction rather than talent." Po, after all, Guyot himself agrees that most of Rishnen's plays are bad - in an artistic sense. And whether they are bad because the author lacked conviction, or vice versa - he had no convictions because he was a bad poet - that is still a question.

II.

Until now, we have tried to substantiate the epistemological legal capacity of artistic creativity in relation to religious truth from the side of its natural, or psychological possibility, empirical reality and logical necessity. Now we will try to metaphysically substantiate the truth of this knowledge, that is, to indicate the real guarantee that would allow us to consider the knowledge obtained in this way as reliable. Let's try to justify our opinion from a religious point of view.

We call this justification "metaphysical" - because it is based on a positive teaching about God and His providential attitude to the world. Artists can be the leaders of religious truth because they are inspired - this is the main point of all the arguments below.

Thus, in the present section of our article, we want to give our theological answer to the question we have taken.

This answer will not be news for our Russian theology. Representatives of Russian Orthodox theological thought have more than once expressed this view of artistic creativity. For example, E. V. Amfitheatrov said in his aforementioned speech: “Without a special mysterious reason, we cannot explain to ourselves the emergence of ideals in the artist's soul, which are born for the most part unexpectedly and always more or less unconsciously and involuntarily. Whatever we call this reason, but, in any case, it seems to act on a person from the outside, and the only question is how it affects the artist's soul ... Each great thought appears not as calculated and sought out, but is born in the soul and reveals itself as something immediately enlightened, something that the soul only now considers closer. As discoveries that seem to come across to us by chance, we mean such thoughts, the connection of which with the circle of known and arbitrary actions was hidden for us. If everything significant both in intellectual and moral life is not accomplished without influence from above, then we with all the greater right can assume such an effect in the activity of fantasy that this activity, in the best and highest that it produces, is not guided by clear consciousness. The thinker immediately asserts a great thought that suddenly flashed in his soul on reasonable grounds, and about great artists and poets, in general, we can say that they go to the grave, not knowing why they chose well-known images, and yet the images they have chosen turn out to be the only true ones. ... We believe and believe that there is an omnipresent basis for the life of all things, that in Him we live, move and exist, and this comforting confidence for our hearts affirms us in the thought that everything significant in our deeds is accomplished according to a special Divine influence. Such a view of the course of affairs in our world is not only the most gratifying, but at the same time the only reasonable and true one. After that, is it not necessary to assume that even during the conception of artistic ideals, the artist's soul, especially sensitive to beauty, is illuminated by a higher Divine power, and with this illumination, the artist instantly perceives the Divine prototype of a thing hidden in his soul? This illumination or inspiration is, therefore, only the intensification and excitement of the artist's own premonitions. While others understand and accept only a fully developed artistic ideal, for an artist it is enough to have a Divine wave to extract and fully develop this ideal from their dark forebodings. Divine thoughts seem to penetrate into his heart by themselves - and this is exactly what happens every time when something new and great, and together generally obligatory, both in general and in particular in the field of art, is revealed to mankind, and human consciousness expands and rises. ... This is a push and message not so much from outside as from within, as if from the center of common life; it is not a mechanical transmission or a ready-made tradition, but an excitement for the development of the Divine idea, and we are not passive, but its active organs. Man's business here is that, with Divine suggestion, he knows how to start something, in the understanding and development of which he already acts independently. AI Vvedensky holds the same view. This view, in our opinion, has ample grounds in its favor.

In our time, artists often learn the name "divine", like epitheton ornas, without trying to combine with this name the real meaning indicated by its etymology. In this case, we simply follow a tradition that dates back to ancient times. But the antiquity, which created this epithet, combined with it a really real meaning.

The Greeks called the poet ένθεος, θεόπνευστος, έχστατιχος. Plato in Phaedrus speaks of the "Divine Madness of the Poet." In Cicero we meet with the concepts - "pati Deum", "furor poeticus". The Greeks' artistic inspiration came from Apollo. Teutonic mythology calls the singer a goddess. Our "Word about Igor's Regiment" is called Bayan "prophetic". In all these cases, we are not dealing with metaphors at all. If we move from deep antiquity to times closer to us and turn to the testimonies of the artists themselves about the origin of their creations, as well as to the opinions of others about them, we will see that here, too, very often and again not in a metaphorical sense, the poet's inspiration is recognized ... "It is common for every true poet, says Guyot, to imagine himself to be a bit of a prophet, and is he ultimately wrong?" Guyot, strictly speaking, is a nihilist; this explains the semi-skeptical nature of his words; but, obviously, he has before his eyes the same facts that will force the believing person with all sincerity to acknowledge the hand of God on the inspired artist. For example, Gabriel Seail, a writer with an undoubtedly spiritualistic mindset, says: “Genius is the gift of grace, his work is like a prayer heard. Poets willingly talk about God who inspires them, about the torments that have earned them this favor, about their raptures when, seized by a stronger personality, merging with God himself (devenus le Dieu même), who dictates their thoughts to them, they do not distinguish themselves from the beauty that they create. " Goethe, in a letter to Eckermann, says the following: “In religious and moral objects, they willingly admit Divine action, but in the objects of knowledge and art they think to see simply earthly, and nothing more, as a product of human forces. But try someone with a purely human strength and will to produce something that could be put on a par with the creations bearing the names of Mozart, Raphael and Shakespeare. " This evidence, as E.V. Amfitheatrov notes, is all the more important for us because it was given by a poet who was in no way a mystic. We have already quoted Schiller's opinion. He also owns such a categorical statement: "Genius is naive, because his thoughts are the essence of Divine suggestions."

If we turn to the history of art, we will see that almost all outstanding artists in all kinds of art considered themselves Divine Chosen, and a similar conviction was created in connoisseurs of their works. Here are some examples. Phidias, having created a statue of Olympian Zeus, himself threw himself on his knees before her in prayer delight, and - adds the pious Greek legend - Zeus gave him from heaven a sign of his favor in the form of a thunderbolt. Epictetus, Plotinus and Philo talk about this statue with the greatest enthusiasm, and Dion Chrysostom even felt liberation from all the sorrows of being when he looked at it. One of the critics of modern times (Curtius) says about Phidias: “this artist rose to the level of a theologian, because his works were revelations of the Divine and ideal reflexes of the national spirit”. Raphael attributed his best ideas to divine inspiration, Haydn says the same about the best pieces of music. Entire legends have been created about the Sistine Madonna by Raphael and Mozart's "Requiem" - as if their creation was preceded by a supernatural vision. Jean Paul affirms: “All artists are theists during their creative work; the poet is like an eye: in him all the rays are the rays of a reflecting mirror. " Solger says: "It is not his personality that creates in the artist, but the idea or the Divine itself." Baader directly attributes creativity to Divine inspiration and says that "everything that is true, great and beautiful, that is only changed and remade into the human race, owes its existence to such inspiration."

If we wanted to multiply the number of judgments about artists and their own testimony about the divine inspiration of their work, then this would not present any difficulties. We believe that these are enough. Now let us ask ourselves: what is the price of this view from the Orthodox Christian, theological point of view? Here we must understand two points for ourselves: are there any theological grounds for recognizing in general the fact of divine inspiration in artistic creation, and - what is the difference between divine inspiration and the supernatural revelation of the Divine to the Prophets, St. Apostles and other heralds of Christian religious truth?

With regard to the first question, we here, first of all, point to one curious archaeological evidence that expresses the view of the Orthodox Church on this subject. In the so-called Greek "icon-painting original", which contains; the Athonite tradition of Orthodox icon painting, in the instructions regarding the location of sacred images in the church, it is advised to place in the fourth tier - saints, martyrs, reverends and pagan poets; in the fifth and last tier, various saints are placed. This phenomenon is completely incomprehensible, if you do not admit that the church really saw in pagan poets deliberate instruments of God's providence, preparing natural humanity to accept the One Who is "Light in revelation with language."

Then you can point to the well-known fact that the ancient church recognized, for example, the inspiration of the so-called. Sibylline verses. At present, in his dogmatic doctrine of Grace, he distinguishes among its types the so-called. natural grace, (gratia naturalis), making it possible for a union (albeit imperfect) between God and man - even outside the church ("foedus ante legem" or "foedus ante aut extra legem et eyangelium"). Hence, it is also clear that the Church recognizes the possibility of a real Revelation of God to the Gentiles. But the most worthy of such revelations among them were undoubtedly their poets, artists and philosophers.

Turning to the actual testimony of Holy Scripture, we find almost only one indication on this issue, but very valuable. This is in Art. ... St. Paul the Apostle in his speech before the Athenian Areopagus said: “I have found an altar on which it is written: to an unknown God. Something that you, not knowing, honor, I preach to you. - From one blood He gave birth to the entire human race ... so that they would seek God, whether they would feel Him or find Him, although He is not far from each of us: for we live by Him, and we move and exist, like some among your poets they said: we are His and our generation. So, we, being the offspring of God, should not think that the Divine is like gold or silver "... In these words we distinguish the following positions: a) preached by St. The Apostle is the One whom the Athenians also honor, not knowing Him; b) but they could know Him by studying the ideal properties of the human spirit, in which the Lord imprinted His Divine nature; c) Greek poets proclaimed this truth about the theomorphic nature of man. And we believe that we are not imposing St. Paul no thoughts alien to him, claiming that he allowed the Spirit of God to work even on pagan poets.

We find much more evidence on this score in the sacred tradition. St. Justin the Martyr made the idea of ​​“ λόγος σπερματιχος ”, Acting and acting in all of humanity - both blessed and extra-gracious. The idea of ​​Christianity even without the historical Christ, which later inspired Tertullian to write his famous "De testimonio animae natura christianae", from its theological and philosophical side is best revealed in the works of St. Justin. About his “λόγος’ e ”he says:“ οΰ παυ γένος άνθρώπων μετέσχε , χαί οί μετά λόγου βιώσαντες Χριστιανοί είσιν , χάν άθεοι ενομίσθησαν οίον έν Ἐλλησι μέν Σωχράτης χαί Ή ράχλειτος χαί οί ομοιοι αυτοίς ” ... In this case, we should not be embarrassed by the fact that it is actually about philosophers, and not about poets. To the latter, we have every right to apply everything that has been said about the former - a fortiori, for Greek philosophy, in the person of Plato and philosophers kindred to him - and only such, as you know, the apologists called guidebooks to Christ - itself recognized a great deal of poetry as competence in comprehending supersensible truth, than what she has learned to herself. And regardless, this philosophy itself is much closer to poetry than to philosophy in our sense. Her intuitive nature certainly makes her akin to poetry. The revelation of the Divine in the geniuses of pagan thought, except for St. Justin was recognized by other apologists, for example. Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, etc. A similar opinion is expressed by Sts. Gregory the Theologian, Basil the Great, Epiphanius of Cyprus and Gregory the Great .

In addition to such direct testimonies, one can find from the teachers of the ancient church also indirect indications of the possibility of a supernatural revelation of the Divine among the pagans. So, for example, Clement of Alexandria claims that all godly people are capable of prophecy. St. Martin, Pope. But piety, as a strong specifically religious feeling, was undoubtedly an outstanding feature of pagan poets and artists. And Holy Scripture teaches that it is possible outside the Church of Christ (cf.;. Sq.).

Referring to the comparison of the revelation of the Divine in the spirit of the artist with the revelation received by the prophets and St. Apostles, we must say that they cannot be fully equated with each other. The divinely inspired sacred writers broadcast to us one pure, adequate truth, which will forever remain an ideal, to which natural knowledge of God only gradually and in the course of historical development approaches. In the Holy Scriptures we have a pure ray of Divine truth, and in works of art - a ray that is repeatedly reflected and refracted. Therefore, artists are sometimes capable of misleading themselves in religious matters, and misleading others. For example, we said that many very strong artistic talents gravitate towards pantheism, and there are cases when a poet even becomes under the banner of atheism ... Therefore, we repeat, it is impossible to equate the divine inspiration of poets and artists with the divine inspiration of the prophets and apostles. It is possible to draw only a certain parallel between them; but at the same time, one must always remember about the enormous differences.

The German researcher of mutual relations and art, Portig, collected and pointed out the parallels and differences between geniuses and the Apostles. Here are some of them: a) they both announce something new, going beyond the limits of knowledge available to science and everyday experience; b) both are relative values: only the products of all geniuses together form art as a whole and give a complete and comprehensive understanding of the truth; on the other hand, and each of the Apostles revealed only some of the secrets of the Divine life; - the fullness of revelation is given only in Jesus Christ; c) both, having become organs of the Holy Spirit, did not cease to be people, with all human weaknesses; in particular, artists are sometimes capable and very low morally; this, of course, cannot be said about the apostles; d) both of them, in revealing their ideas, did not obey the conditions of ordinary work - the direct illumination of the spirit makes any methodical methods superfluous for them. These are similarities. And here are the differences: a) an extremely great power of imagination is required in a genius; for the Apostles this is by no means a necessary quality, because they had not to create an image of truth, but only to retell what the Holy Spirit revealed to them; that is why many apostolic writings are completely devoid of artistic pleasantness and are distinguished by the extreme simplicity of the external form of expression; to artists, God reveals himself only by arousing their natural strengths and abilities, while to the Apostles he also reveals such secrets that no natural mind can ever discover; b) the artist does not need to be religiously reborn in order to be capable of creativity; for the Apostles this is necessary; c) genius discovers God in his creations; Moreover, the Apostles constantly carry Him in their hearts; therefore, d) genius also lives for humanity, in fact, in his creations, which are subject to artistic criticism and even amendments; as for the Apostles, for Christians their very personality is important, which assimilates already indisputable authority, as a living bearer of the Holy Spirit.

These explanations achieve two goals: on the one hand, they prevent our religious feeling from being embarrassed by the recognition of the divine inspiration of artistic creativity, and on the other, they nevertheless reinforce our idea of ​​such divine inspiration from a new angle.

In conclusion, we consider it necessary to add to all the above considerations that, delving into the very essence of Christian theism, we find here new confirmation of our view of artistic creation. At the very creation of man, the Lord, according to the belief of the Church, set him one of the main life goals of the knowledge of God. St. Basplius the Great writes: “You are a well-equipped vessel, having received being from God: glorify your Creator. For this is only why you were created, to be a worthy instrument of the glory of God; and this whole world is like a living book for you, which proclaims the glory of God, and proclaims to you who have reason about the hidden and invisible greatness of God, so that you know the God of truth. Keep what I have said firmly in your memory. " St. Gregory the Theologian says: "It was necessary that the worship of God should not be limited to the heavenly ones, but there were also some worshipers, and everything was filled with the glory of God (because everything is God): for this a man is created, honored by the creation of hands and the image of God." St. John Chrysostom: “God has given us sight, mouth and hearing so that all our members serve Him, so that we can speak and do what is pleasing to Him, sang unceasing songs to Him, and send Him thanksgiving”. St.: “Someone justly said: this is the kind of Esma (), for the Creator gave us from his affinity, that is, a rational nature, so that we look for that Divine, which is not far from the only one who is us (-27) and about where we live and move and we are. " - Here are the passages from the church fathers, which are considered to express the church's view on the purpose of God's creation of man. In all of them we see that the knowledge of God and hence the glorification of God is indicated as the most important, and, so to speak, the main goal. All other goals (a person's own bliss, domination over creatures, etc.) are already after this. And the Apostle Paul, as we have seen, does not mention any other purpose of the creation of people, except that - "so that they seek God."

If we turn now to those passages of Holy Scripture, which speaks of the knowledge of God (.;.;;;; Hex. 33: 18–20;; v.), We will see that almost all of them speak about the powerlessness of natural wisdom and about that the knowledge of God is the fruit of the wisdom of God with the secret secret. Such wisdom differs substantially from natural wisdom; it is given by the Spirit of God only to those people who can be called spiritual (πνευματιχοί), that is, they live not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

Religion (From Lat. Religio - piety, piety, shrine) is a perception of the world, inspired by faith in God. It is not just a belief or a set of beliefs. Religion is also a sense of connectedness, dependence and obligation in relation to the secret higher power, which gives support and worthy of worship. This is how many sages and philosophers understood religion - Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Christ, Muhammad. What is the difference between religious knowledge and scientific knowledge?

Least of all, religion reflects logical rationality. Most of all, it is an instrument of a peculiar, emotional-intuitive and concrete-figurative world assimilation. Religion is a special, operational way of orientation in that still unknown, strange, mysterious, difficult to verbalize (embodied in a word, concept), which a person constantly encounters in the world around him and in himself and which at the same time cannot directly perceive, measure, describe and comprehend. Religion expresses the desire to directly and tangibly touch the "behind the looking glass", beyond, secret, eternal, primordial. And in this sense - by belief and cult - it constitutes a kind, direct philosophy of everyday consciousness, unformalized and unlogical.

Scientific knowledge explains the world from itself, in contrast to religious concepts, without resorting to extranatural, supernatural forces, this is their main difference. It turns out that religion and science are developing in opposite directions, that is, science, based on individual facts, events, laws, restores the general picture of the world, while religion, based on a general idea, tries to explain individual laws, events, facts. In view of all of the above, an understanding of the tasks of science and religion in the education of a person, the development of his world outlook, his thinking, both individual and socio-social, looms.

The task of religion is to educate in a person an understanding of the world as a single, harmonious whole, the components of which are organically interconnected, in which the slightest changes on a local scale lead to significant consequences on a global scale. The task of science is to educate in a person the awareness of the interconnectedness of the world and the development of an idea of ​​the correct use of the potential to achieve a particular result, to satisfy the desired.

Therefore, the commonality becomes clear, the unity of science and religion in the process of personality formation becomes clear, as well as their opposite in the upbringing of the individual: from the general to the particular or from the unique to the universal. Their opposite direction leads to their struggle. Thus, science and religion are a vivid example of the struggle and unity of opposites, which, according to the laws of dialectics, leads to constant movement, that is, a constant struggle for ideals, which is the cause and effect of the improvement of human consciousness, thinking, lays the foundations of the world outlook and world outlook, does not give exhaustive answers, thereby forcing to strive for perfection, objectively and subjectively forcing the course of history to continue and humanity to develop, is one of the foundations of being.

Thus, religion and science complement each other, since the absence of one leads either to the birth of the absent one, or to the degeneration of the existing one. In addition, religion can and should play a regulating role in relation to science, in a sense, so that knowledge that could harm others is not transferred to an unprepared individual.

Unlike science, which is characterized by a readiness for self-refutation (far from always being realized) - right down to basic principles, religious knowledge - within the framework of any confession - is usually aimed at affirming and confirming the original dogmas, the symbol of faith (however, scientific ideas are also always based on there are certain postulates that are accepted without proof and most often unprovable; scientists explicitly or implicitly defend them, defending them as if they were indisputable). Another difference: in religious cognition, the world is seen as a manifestation of divine intentions and forces, while in science it is seen as a relatively independent reality.

However, for the human sciences, in particular, psychology, religious quests are of particular importance and often turn out to be deeper and more subtle than the traditional scientific approach. In addition, the problem of faith and religious consciousness is very important for a number of the world's largest psychologists - not only in terms of their personalities, but also in the construction of psychological theories and psychotherapeutic systems.

• - a term originally applied to church leaders, and then widely used to designate religious associations that arose mainly as opposition movements in relation to ...

  Historical Dictionary

• - Religion deals with so many intangible things that the scientific study of religion as such is almost impossible ...

  Psychological encyclopedia

• - - purposeful and systematic cultivation of believers by instilling in them a worldview, attitude, norms of attitudes and behavior, corresponding to the dogmas and doctrinal principles of a certain ...

  Pedagogical terminological dictionary

• - An authoritarian hierarchical organization of any orientation, destructive in relation to the natural harmonious spiritual, mental and physical state of the individual, as well as to creative traditions and ...

  Religious terms

• - - a gradual or sudden change in the existential orientation of a person, as a result of which he becomes an adherent of any religion or religious teaching ...

  Philosophical Encyclopedia

• - RELIGIOUS REVELATION - in monotheistic religions, a direct personal expression of the will of God as an absolute truth, usually formalized in texts with a sacred status ...

  Encyclopedia of Epistemology and Philosophy of Science

• - a voluntary association of citizens of the Russian Federation, other persons permanently and legally residing in the territory of the Russian Federation, formed for the purpose of joint confession and dissemination of faith and possessing appropriate ...

  Glossary of legal terms

• Glossary of legal terms

• - voluntary association of citizens of the Russian Federation and other persons. permanently and legally residing in the territory of the Russian Federation, formed for the purpose of joint confession and dissemination of faith and possessing appropriate ...

  Encyclopedia of the Lawyer

• - a voluntary association of citizens of the Russian Federation, other persons permanently and legally residing in the territory of the Russian Federation, formed for the purpose of joint confession and dissemination of faith and possessing the corresponding ...

  Big Law Dictionary

• - one of the main historical forms of law, in which not secular state power is considered as the primary source, but the will of the deity, expressed in the scriptures or legends ...

  Big Law Dictionary

• - a voluntary association of citizens formed for the purpose of joint confession and dissemination of faith and possessing such characteristics corresponding to this purpose: religion ...

  Administrative law. Reference dictionary

• - "... 2.12. Religious - the transmission of divine services, special television and radio sermons, theological talks ..." Source: Order of Rosokhrankultura from 15.08.2006 N 160 & lt ...

  Official terminology

• - ...

  Encyclopedic Dictionary of Economics and Law

• - in Old Testament Judaism - a group of worship, mainly sacrifices, aimed at freeing the body and the entire life environment from all kinds of desecration, physical and moral, so that ...

  Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Euphron

• - a system of professional training for ministers of religious cults, specialists-theologians, teachers of theology in theological educational institutions and religious education of the population ...

  Great Soviet Encyclopedia

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