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PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES
SPIRITUALITY AND RATIONALITY: THE WAYS OF REUNITING IN THE POST-SECULAR SPACE OF THE PERSONAL SELF-KNOWLEDGE
Patsan V. (Archbishop Eulogius of Novomoskovsk) (Ukraine) ДУХОВНОСТЬ И РАЦИОНАЛЬНОСТЬ: СПОСОБЫ ВОССОЕДИНЕНИЯ В ПОСТСЕКУЛЯРНОМ ПРОСТРАНСТВЕ ЛИЧНОСТНОГО САМОПОЗНАНИЯ Пацан В. А. (Евлогий, архиепископ Новомосковский) (Украина)
Пацан Василий Алексеевич /Patsan Vasyl — кандидат богословия, кандидат философских наук,
старший преподаватель, кафедра философии, факультет общественных наук и международных отношений, Днепропетровский национальный университет им. Олеся Гончара, г. Днепр, Украина
Abstract: the article reveals the premises of overcoming the secularistic restrictions of the person's self-definition provoking the crisis of the self-identification in the current social-cultural situation; the author examines the ways of the dialogic interaction between theological and philosophical discourses initiating the formation of the post-secular horizon of perceiving the personhood; the study marks the perspective of defining the personal modus of human existence revealing for the post-traditionalist consciousness appealing to the meta-ontological dimension of the personality disclosed by the Supernatural Revelation, explained by the patristic theology and indicated in the sphere of philosophizing by Orthodox personalism. Аннотация: в статье выявляются предпосылки преодоления секуляристских ограничений самоопределения человека, обусловивших кризис персональной идентификации в социокультурной ситуации современности; рассматриваются пути диалогического взаимодействия богословского и философского дискурсов, инициирующего формирование постсекулярного ракурса восприятия личностности; осмысливается перспектива определения личностного модуса человеческого существования, открывающаяся перед посттрадиционалистским сознанием при обращении к мета-онтологическому измерению личности, открытому Божественным Откровением, концептуализированному в святоотеческой триадологии и обозначенному в сфере философствования православным персонализмом.
Keywords: Trinitarian God, human cognition of God, communication with God, human personality, meta-ontology of personhood.
Ключевые слова: Триединый Бог, богопознание, богообщение, человеческая личность, мета-онтология личностности.
The problematization of the self-identity in the philosophical-humanitarian dimension of the contemporaneity discloses the deadlock of objectivizing the personal mode of the human existence transcendentally experienced as the communion with Absolute Personality of God.
Exposed by both deconstructivist and communicative branches of postmodernism as a fatal check of metaphysics and phenomenology, the lack of the definite ontological status of the personhood was transformed into the problematic modus of being by post-structuralist and post-phenomenological practices of deconstructing the foundations of ratiocentrism. Restricting the cognitive resource of the personal-subjective self-manifestation to recognizing the absence of the Source of being in the human existence, reduced by such denial of the ultimate experience of communication to non-final differentiation between the Self and the Other, deconstructivism and communicative philosophy formed the alternative ways of the person's self-definition coinciding in the elimination of the absolute criterion of verity from its field.
The deconstructive matrix of "the split subjectivity" dooms the person to interiorize the irreducibility of the semantic difference by the definition of depersonalized Transcendent Absolute as the absent "transcendental signified" (J. Derrida) in the discourse equalized to the existential reality [14].
The ethical-communicative model of the subjective self-identity introduced by E. Levinas conceptualizes it as "the otherness-in-the-same" formin by the non-reciprocal responsible relation to the neighbour perceived as the Image of Absolutely Transcendent Personal God apophatically defined as absent in the actual reality of human cognition. Arguing for the absence of Creator in the created world by non-verbalization of His Absolute Personhood, indefinable in the categories of rational thinking, and comprehending the neighbourhood of the other as the alterity of knowledge (originally indicated by the construction "autrement
que savoir" [17]), the ethical-phenomenological version of dialogism affirms the superiority of personal being over all the modes of its rationalization performed in classical and non-classical forms of ontology. But Levinasian reflection of the personal-subjective responsibility grasping it as "a more severe name" [18, p. 43] for loving the neighbour does not provide the subject's self-manifestation by means of ethical perception restricted by prohibiting the immediate appeal to God and mediating the relationship of the created person with Creator by his/her encounter with the Other. Inspired by unconditional God's love for humanity the human ability to love the neighbour can not reveal itself without the communion of the created Self with Creator. Therefore the core imperative of the transcendental ethics of communication separating the human personality from unconditional being makes him/her unable to identify himself/herself in the dialogue concealing godlikeness of the Self and removed from the ultimate communicative situation ensured by the supernatural Revelation and the personal access to it. Thus, evidently correlated with the Bible topology of the personhood as the restrictive reception of both Christ's commandments of love, the pattern of the personal-subjective self-definition proposed by the founder of ethical transcendentalism remains unfeasible depriving the created personality of the potential to communicate with Creator "beyond the being" [18] by the renewal of the rationalistic separation of both human cognition of God and subjective self-knowledge from the live communication with Him.
Detached from the evidence of "the subject's authenticity" (M. A. Mozsheyko) by both forms of manifesting "the agnostic position" [15] of post-metaphysics, the rationally oriented person's self-reflection of the late twentieth - early twenty-first centuries achieves the threshold of realizing the return to the unconditionally-personal truth of God's Word ("I am the way and the truth and the life"(J ohn 14:6)) as the only way to overcome the limits of anthropocentrism responsible for the self-destruction of posttraditionalist consciousness. Revealing itself in the field of philosophizing as the rise of the post-secular philosophy intended to comprehend the theocentricity of the ultimate communicative experience reflected by theology, the initiative of transcending "the immanent frame" of the secular world perception [21] is supported in the ecclesiastical sphere by the call to revise on the basis of theism both the metaphysical devices of depersonalizing the Source of being and the forms of their phenomenological application. Grasping the separation of the human mind from its spiritual origins as the main outcome of secularizing the world view, the theological thought reveals the premises of such dissociation predetermined by the scholastic substantiation of the theory of two truths. Having been comprehended by Orthodox theologians since introducing the theological courses into the curriculum of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (1690), this predetermination is currently realized by Catholic and Protestant theologians. [10; 13; 19]. Therefore consolidating the efforts aimed at restoring the comprehension of the unity of the human spirit in the domain of philosophizing, "the theolo y wends its way to the philosophy, and the philosophy is directed towards the theology" [9, p. 10].
Starting in the late twentieth - early twenty-first centuries, this two-way movement "testifies to the awareness ... of the inseparability of intellectual source from its spiritual origins, opened by Christianity, but lost in the course of the secularization of knowledge" [5, p. 237]. The designation of such a prospect of the departure from the secularized modes of thinking does not demonstrate the exhaustion of resources of rational cognition: "The voluntary communion of the person with God, the involvement of his mind into the conciliar mind of the Church negates neither human mind nor manifestations of personal life, but on the contrary, it is their triumph. Through the incarnation of Christ, "shined upon the world the light of wisdom" [2, p. 8].
Intended to expound the personhood as the ultimate principle of being for the rationally oriented person of after-post-modernity, trying to manifest his/her identity in opposition to the radical pluralism characteristic of "the post-modern condition" [3], the emerging dialog ical interaction of philosophical and theological discourses breaks the soil for post-secular thought realizing the insufficiency of the rationalistic tools of human cognition of God and subjective self-knowledge and striving to acquire the arsenal of defining the self-experience elaborated by theology [16]. 'Such convergency of both ways of ultimate explanations dissociated by the impersonal formes of thinking presupposes the realization of the meta-ontological character of the problem of the human personality explicated in the midst of the twentieth century by the prominent Orthodox theologian and philosopher-personalist V. N. Lossky. Having compared philosophical and theological approaches to its decision, one of the greatest apologists of the personhood in the last century came to the conclusion: "And if there is a certain meta-ontology, only God can know it, that God, Whom Genesis show us during the pause in His creativity made to say at the Pre-Eternal Council of Trinity Hypostases: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" [4, p. 411].
This landmark for the person's self-reflection directs it to the Trinitology formulated in the fourth century by the Great Cappadocians - Saint Basil the Great, Saint Gregory the Theologian and Saint Gregory of Nyssa as the dogmatic substantiation of the Trinitarity of God denoting the meta-ontological dimension of the personality. In the course of Christianization of both the category of hypostasis (urcoaxaaK;) actualized by the antique philosophical reflection and its companion ousia (ouaia) established in the same field of the
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philosophy detached from the Absolute truth of God's Word the Great Church Teachers from Cappadocia revealed and explained the Trinitarian meta-logic giving the clue to understanding the personal principle of being. By the characteristics of the hypostatic mode of existence due to which "neither the difference of hypostases brea s the continuity of nature nor the community of essence mer es the particular features" [8, p.85], the Cappadocian Fathers exposed the fundamental structure of the meta-ontology of personhood laying the foundations for overcoming the limits of the ontological definitions of personality formed by the different historical types of rationality before and after the Birth of Christ [6; 7]. Initiating the spiritual perception of the Trinitological dogma, Saint Basil the Great, Saint Gregory the Theologian and Saint Gregory of Nyssa emphasize that both human cognition of God and personal self-knowledge imply the experience of communion with Creator in which the created person realizes the soteriological perspective.
The meta-ontological connection of vertical and horizontal lines of interpersonal relationship is expressed in the well-known "geometrical parable" expounded by Venerable Abba Dorotheos in his "Soul-Profiting Teachin s and Epistles". This symbolic picture of personal bein represents the world as a circle of communication in which the Self and the Other are moving within its radii to its center that is God. Directed by two Christ's Commandments of love the log ic of such movement is revealed in the maxim: "The more one is united to his neighbour the more he is united to God" [1, p. 98].
To comprehend the meta-ontology of personhood uncovered by the Supernatural Revelation and explained by the patristic theology, the post-secular philosophy should incarnate the "theistic sug g estion" (B. P. Bowne) of philosophizing which was indicated by the personalist thought in the late nineteenth - early twentieth centuries [11; 12] and inspired the movement of non-classical and post-non-classical philosophical reflection to the foundations of theism. Nowadays the philosophical-theological dialog about the personality is to be continued.
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