May 28–31, 2017 (begins on Sunday evening, closes on Wednesday evening)

 

Benedictine Abbey in Tyniec, ul. Benedyktynska 37, 30-398 Krakow, Poland

 

Academic Board: Prof. Sr Teresa Obolevitch (Krakow), Prof. Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen (Granada), Dr Paweł Rojek (Krakow)

Advisory Board: Prof. Gennadii Aliaiev (Poltava), Prof. Konstantin Antonov (Moscow), Prof. Rev. Pavel Khondzinskii (Moscow), Prof. Marcelo López Cambronero (Granada), Prof. Daniela Steila (Turin)

Conference Secretary: Mrs Olga Tabatadze (Granada)

 

The second decade of the 21st century, which has been especially rich in events of great importance to the Church, gives us a privileged position from which to try to outline a contemporary view of issues that are key to modern man – and, therefore, fundamental to theology, philosophy, and literature… The specific nature of Russian religious philosophy allows us to build a more complete interpretation of the contemporary world by avoiding the increasingly obvious tricks of modern positivist thought, and to explore the theological and philosophical intuitions of Russian thinkers, which with the passing of time seem to be ever more current and on the mark.  This attitude towards the legacy of Russian thought allows us to reaffirm the importance of research on the history thereof. At the same time, it makes it possible for us to try to overcome a certain complex that reduces such studies to a type of “exotic philosophical archeology” within academic theological/philosophical circles, even in Russia. Philosophy cannot exist without the “history of philosophy,” but when it is reduced to mere investigations of the past, it ceases to be philosophy. (The same occurs with theology.) This idea underlies the program proposed for our upcoming conferences, and closely reflects the personality and thought of Alexei Khomiakov, our author for the Krakow Meetings 2017.

For this Russian thinker, one of the founders of the Slavophile school of thought, belief in the Church’s – and Christian thought’s – organic relationship with the society that has been given to us, is an assertion as self-evident as the need to nourish ourselves from the legacy of age-old ecclesiastic experience. Khomiakov was thus able to unreservedly offer an alternative to the also-Christian schools of thought colonized by modernity and shackled in the sterile fields of neo-Scholasticism, Kantianism, liberalism, and capitalism, even overcoming the limits of the deserts of Christian thought mangled by modernity and buried under the names of conservatism, traditionalism, values, etc. The Slavophile proposal of “integral life” entails the need for ontological, epistemological, anthropological, and historiosophical exploration, which, rooted in the experience of sobornost’ – communion – allows Khomiakov to explore ways to overcome the colonization by modernity, which is something that the Church continues to need today as well. The life of the Church community thus emerges as a true alternative, full of life and hope – and not just as one element of individualized, alienated, and fragmented post-Enlightenment society. Thanks to this position, Khomiakov was able to emphatically affirm, “Communion in love is not only useful but wholly necessary for the attainment of truth, and the attainment of truth is based on this communion and is impossible without it. Inaccessible to individual thought, truth is accessible only to the combination of thought linked by love. This feature sharply distinguished Orthodox teaching from other teachings: from Latinism, which depends on external authority; and from Protestantism, which emancipates the individual into the desert of rational abstraction.”

The pathologies that Khomiakov attributes to the Latin Church and to Protestantism – namely, authority and individualism alienated in the desert of the abstraction of reason, no less alienated and fragmented – are today the fundamental characteristics of modern states, of the societies in which we live, and to a large extent, of the alternatives that are brought forth in an attempt to counter them, too, whether they be new anarchist and anti-system schools of thought or nationalistic or imperialist claims…. that may also be presented as Christian, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. For Khomiakov, the Church is not merely an institution or a doctrine, but rather a living body of truth and love, imbued with the spirit of sobornost’. Understood in this way, the Church is also a social organization.

His works therefore figure today as a provocation that helps us once again take on the challenge of rescuing Christian thought from modern colonization, of taking it back from the desert of enlightened abstraction so that it can offer modern man a true alternative, a space for love and truth, the living experience of the Church. Alexei Khomiakov’s person and thought present us with this challenge, which shapes the objectives of the Krakow Meetings 2017: namely, furthering knowledge of the work of this Russian thinker, advancing studies of his sources and his influence on the development of Russian thought, and exploring the surprising topicality of his philosophical/theological proposal.

 

Alexey Malinov, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia

Teresa Obolevitch, Pontifical University of John Paul II, Krakow, Poland

Andrey Popov, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia