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9Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 1 (2009 2) 31-55
УДК 008
Truth as a Form of Modelling of Integrity at Social Being Level
Alexandra A. Semenova and Natalia P. Koptzeva*
Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia 1
Received 24.02.2009, received in revised form 03.03.2009, accepted 10.03.2009
This article is about the problem of formation and existence of the social integrity. There is to be named the factors of the formation of social integrity. The ideological basis of the social integrity is underlined like the main factor for this formation. There is the review and analytic research of the historical forms of religious and philosophic models of integrity at social being level. Historical period of 15th and 16th of Old Russia is researched more detailed like the example of socio-centrism model in historical development.
Keywords: cultural science; social cultural science; society; socio-centrism; socio-centrical religiousness; social integrity; factors of formation of social integrity; religious models of social integrity; philosophic models of social integrity; the old russia in 15th and 16th centuries; the moscow russian in 15th and 16th centuries; national self-identification; the heretical ideas of the 15th and the 16th centuries of Old Russia; the heresy of the Judaizers; Iosif Volotzkyi; the concept of the absolute monarchy; autocracy; tsar Ivan the Terrible.
POINT
Specificities of modelling of integrity at social being level
First of all, it is necessary to mention that the contraposition of individual and social being is rather relative. An individual is directly and organically included in society as integrity of a larger scale. Individual self-being out of that inclusion is not absolute and complete. An individual and society supplement each other, and, as the parts of each other, they give the meaning of existence. At the same time, both of these integrities, society and an individual, are to be theoretically and practically considered as some independent formations with their own specificity
* Corresponding author E-mail address: decanka@mail.ru
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and special laws of modelling of integrity. The main question is how some creatures as atoms turn into society, what the base, the content and, perhaps, the aim of that integrity are.
As is well known, there are two main points of view at the conditions of social integrity. According to the first point of view, society is an arena of incessant conflicts of the social groups separated according to their economic, political and ideological interests. The supporters of that conception maintain the idea that the social unity is fictitiously ephemeral, and theoretically to substantiate that unity as something real means hypocrisy, which conceals the purport of screening the dictatorial attitudes of one social
group to the others. But they also believe that the social unity and integrity is a perspective object of its being, which, after all, is to be achieved by the efforts of some concrete social groups, the interests of which coincide with the interests of society as a whole.
The other conception is based on the fact that the bright contrasts and contradictions in society do not prevent from consideration of society as a real, but not a nominal integrity with its objectively common interests, and that it is possible to take some stabilizing steps with the appropriate technologies, which are to bring to the compromise between the opposite forces, permanently and dynamically re-producing society as a complete whole. The conception is also based on the systematic approach suggesting the consideration of society as integrity, which consists of the parts connected with each other, and, as the result, some integral qualities appear that characterize the integrity, but not its parts.
First and foremost, we are interested in the reflective and spiritual processes, inside which the social unity is formed as a way to the Absolute, the forms of which society seeks and finds inside itself. According to the conception of D.V. Pivovarov, where it is mentioned of the social-centric religions, which the searcher defines as «... the search of the humankind or some part of society for the omni-unity of all its essential forces and realization of the searched spiritual unity in a selected sacred object. The archetype of counciliarity (sobornost), essential for the life of society, gradually fades away. So the main aim of the social-centric religions is to restore the lost social unity» (Contemporary philosophic dictionary, 1998).
Let us consider the situation of the lost social unity. It appears quite objectively as the real society exists only owing to real empirically separated individuals with different interests, aims and purports of their actions, as it's been
already mentioned. In that sense, social life really seems to be a sum of different wills, separated "Ego" to whom every other individual seems to be "Non-Ego". Then the process of interrelation of separated individuals is casual collisions when the sides comes to some agreement, which, nevertheless, doesn't have any constant significance and is not essential for the both of the sides. Secondly, objective necessity makes individuals consciously seek for consolidation in order to survive, and the whole is formed by the way of external submission to the leading common will. It is the question of phenomena of power and law not only in the state, but also in any other social community, including family and other kinds of union between people. In that case, the principle of mutual restriction is in force: the leading common will of the whole restricts spontaneous displaying of wills of separated individuals, who, in their turn, seek to realize their individual rights by restriction of the will of the whole.
It's quite obviously that forced or mechanical synthesis of separated individuals in some integrity cannot last long. There is a necessity for the inner striving of every separated creature for the unity with those ones similar to him, it is necessary to understand that the sought unity with other individuals is an indispensable condition for achievement of its individual integrity. So it is also necessary that those separated individuals might want to act in such a way their actions could bring to their integrity. It requires some special force, energy and infectiousness that could make up the intuition or consciousness of solidarity of individuals with each other. Of course, that energy eventually turns into some other forms and gradually expires, and that leads to society's suffering from rupture between its different parts, including separated individuals. The word "suffering" hasn't been used by accident: to our mind, if the integrity can be restored, that means
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it hasn't been completely destroyed. Moreover, there is a fundamental base of human being that makes the unity of all separated individuals be possible. The contradictions as essential moments of society's development are of importance only because they always have a common field of their appearance and conflicting interrelations.
In our opinion, the conception of three-spheres of social organism going back to Rudolf Steiner's (Steiner, 1992) (Fig. 1) theory is especially fruitful for elaboration of this research question. Let us formulate its principal propositions. In every society as integrity it is possible to distinguish three basic elements of its structure which form the system of social unity. First and foremost, it's an economic sphere connected with everything concerning industry, consumption and exchange of goods. In Russian research literature that sphere of society's life has been analyzed completely and comprehensively in a number of social sciences and humanities, including social philosophy, economics, politics, etc.
The second sphere of social life is politics and law, including political life, legal and public relations. If economics deals with everything people need, with the products of nature and industry they consume, and also with goods, commodity circulation and consumption, the second sphere is connected with human relations coming merely from the bases of human nature. To our mind, it is extremely important to emphasize a relative independence of these two spheres or, at least, fix the necessity of this independence for the normal functions of a civil state. To be sure, all people dealing with economy have feeling for law and order at the same time. But a civil state must have its own administrative and legislative institutions based on some other principles than those ones, which come from economic life of society. Just owing to the functional division of the both of these spheres of activities, each of
Fig. 1. Rudolf Steiner - austrien philosopher-mystic (1861 - 1925)
them gets chance to have a necessary influence on the activities of each other.
In those cases when a civil state becomes an economic organization, it loses its capacity of regulation of people's legal life. In such a case its measures and institutions become means of satisfaction of commodity-consumption interests and thus drive off the impulses directed to the legal life.
That is not the question of exchange of commodities. It is a necessary moment of the modern social organism based on the division of labour, but the question is that the exchange of a right for commodity makes a right to be commodity, for a right appears inside economic life here. That transformation of a right into commodity is possible to be prevented only in the case of creating of two kinds of institution in the society: on the one hand, those are the institutions with the aim of expedient organization of commodity circulation, and, on the other
hand, the institutions regulating the rights of the participants of turnover, producers, dealers, and consumers. The division of economic and legal organization of society is one of the main problems of the contemporary society's condition. But that interesting problem is out of our analysis here. Most of all we are interested in the third sphere of the social organism.
The third sphere has the same relative independence like the other two ones mentioned above. The third sphere includes everything concerned with the spiritual life. To be more precise, it suggests everything based on individual abilities and everything that is to be included in the social organism exactly on that basis coming from an individual. Everything happening in the economic and legal spheres of the society is under the forces of the third source - individual personal talents of some individuals. That sphere covers all people deeds serving for the social unity from the highest spiritual achievements to the simplest kinds of manual work done according to some concrete physical abilities of an individual. Everything happening in this sphere is included in the social organism by the perfect way of organization different from the ways of organization of commodity-economic and state-legal relations.
If some kind of human activity coming from the individual abilities of a person is under unnatural influence of economic life or state organization, that kind of activity considerably loses its true base of existence. Only the power originating from the spiritual activity can be the base. For the strong development of spiritual life also variously connected with the development of all the other individual human abilities (economic and political and legal), it is necessary that the spiritual life in its creative work should be left to its own impulses and, in its turn, could find co-authorship of those people who are able to comprehend it. Normal existence of society
is possible only in the case of inclusion of an individual in the social organism following the impulses coming from the spiritual life. In its turn, it is necessary the spiritual life to be distinguished as a special reality with its own autonomous content beyond the material life. Everything is brought together in the sphere of spiritual life: art, science, religion, world outlook, and all the things connected with it. Nevertheless, it is possible to descry the main stem able to organize not only the spiritual life of society but also give energy to the whole society in all its three spheres. The question is of the desire for the lost unity, which is fixed in the idea «aspiration for the Absolute», where the Absolute takes the shape of the united and cemented society and where «Ego» of an individual derives its strength from social «We».
That's quite obvious, the problem of the society's unity takes place when that unity is lost or when the radical need of its restoration is realized. When that urgent objective necessity of restoration of the lost unity springs up, the function of that restoration is undertaken by different social subjects who are to create a new content of infectiousness and energy supplying individuals' inner aspiration for the social integrity. Separate individuals, social groups, special organizations, etc., can be such subjects. This analysis reveals importance not in a type of social object, which takes upon itself the aim of restoration of the social unity, but in the happening spiritual processes. First and foremost, it is the question of the religious and philosophical models of those processes with which society creates or reproduces itself as the integral whole.
Specificities of the religious way of modelling of integrity at social being level
On the one hand, there are various religious models of social integrity arising inside some religious theory: Christian socialism, idea of the society of «great unity» in Confucianism, etc.
On the other hand, we can speak about religious experience as modelling of social integrity. First and foremost, the second line is to be considered in the research where religion takes a special form of socio-centric religion (D.V. Pivivorov's concept). Firstly, that allows to broaden the conception of essence of religion including all those religious forms, which up to now has not been usual to be considered from the point of view of their religious characteristics (cult of personality, cult of state, and cult of nation) and, secondly, that also allows to comprehend these religious forms not as something negative destroying society but, on the contrary, as something necessary, which unites society in its wholeness giving impulses for the existence of all its spheres in their unity and independence at the same time.
We choose a way of spiritual modelling of social integrity by selecting religion and philosophy as the models of social unity. According to D.V. Pivovarov's conception, society's spiritual unity is compulsory embodied in a certain sacred object. A personality of a ruler, nation, state, and political system can become that object. To be sure, the question is of the society's static condition while its dynamics requires a special analysis beside this research work.
Let us try to consider the way of choosing of a sacred object uniting society in its integral whole. Can that integrity be personified by the territory, which a certain society occupies? No, it cannot, as the frontiers of a territory always change and serve as an object of international disagreements. The unity of society consisting of living individuals requires obviously personified unity with strong-willed and spiritual traits like the best representatives of that society; it means that it is more natural that society is often personified by an individual, a living subject. It is connected with the spiritual object's necessity of sensitively concrete living form, shape and image embodied in a living person.
Personification of society's unity by a living individual undoubtedly has religious nature when state power is taken as something sacred giving its personificator the supreme rank of social hierarchy. Religious perception of individual power of a ruler is to be observed in the history of the mankind and in very different cultures for thousands of years. A ruler, personifying the unity of society, is a mediator between a society and the Absolute and a bearer bringing multitude to unity and also bringing society in the world of the Absolute with the unity as its indispensable attribute.
Personification of society's unity by an individual ruler is based on the confidence in a special link between a ruler and the Absolute, which a common man does not have. That connection makes a ruler to be a bearer of the absolute source and demands him to be an actual personification of the absoluteness in the real society's life. That's why in the early ages of the mankind's history a ruler was to be worshiped not only as personification of the state power but also as the embodied Absolute. Being connected with the Absolute with a very special link, he was the first and supreme celebrant, the only mediator between people and the Absolute. An ancient ruler of the East was always worshiped as God. The Ancient Rome also had the evolution of deification of a ruler. Even having adopted Christianity, Emperor Constantine didn't decline the title of the supreme sacrificer of the Roman Empire for the sacrificer symbolically was present at each religious ceremony held in the territory of the State and, as a consequence, his presence was spread everywhere.
Byzantine Christianity founds a special doctrine of holiness of the emperor's power based on the emperor's Chrismation, the ritual held only for the emperor, not for any of his subjects. The kings of the West always had sacerdotal rights and traced their origin to gods. God the Father
was pictured as an emperor in German and as a king in France and England from the 14th century. The idea of tsar's greatness has the prototype of greatness of God in Joseph Volotzkyi's philosophy. The examples can be given without end. In any case, one of the forms of cementation of the social integrity can be named the cult of a ruler's personality as a sacred person connected with the Absolute and thus taking on his own shoulders some special responsibility for that society, videlicet for making special wholeness living according to the Absolute's laws and connected with the Absolute through the mediation of a ruler's personality.
The second form of a sacred object favouring society's cementation is the cult of the nation which also has religious content.
For example, quoting of Feodor Tyutchev's quatrain is a commonplace in many public speeches:
Russia is baffling to the mind, Not subject to the common measure Her ways - of a peculiar kind... One only can have faith in Russia.
(Translated by Avril Pyman) But the first line of the poem is more often and rather ironically accentuated while the analysis of literary form of the poem shows that the main idea the author tried to express is in the end: "One only can have faith in Russia". Identification of a nation with the sacred object that personifies social integrity is one of the main forms of socio-centric religion.
The religious cult of a nation is bound up with the fact that national specificities of the society's way to the unity with the Absolute are associated with the universal ways, for all this the archetype of the way to the Absolute is a national model, not a universal one. In this connection, the conception of conciliarity (sobornost) is worked out in the Russian philosophy, and the Russian people are to be considered as bearers
of the Orthodox conciliar source. Conciliarity is closely connected with the conception of the universal unity brought by Vladimir Solovyov in the Russian philosophy.
But the cult of nation as a sacred object centralizing society's integrity does not appear in the Russian religious philosophy of the 19th and the 20th centuries for the first time. That is one of the most ancient models of re-construction of society's integrity. We can find it in the ideology of contraposition of the Hellenes and the barbarians in the ancient mind, and the personification of this model is Plato's "Ideal State". In the European spiritual culture the developed form of this socio-centric religion can be found in Hegel's philosophy of history, in his conception of historical and non-historical nations, where one or another nation is considered as a bearer of the concrete spirit, the Absolute revealing in time. As Hegel supposes, the Spirit in itself is a meaningless idea and it finds its reality in temporal forms, its substantial nature is history through which freedom of actual being is carried out. A temporal form of the Spirit is a spirit of a united nation: "Individuals belong to it; each individual is a son of his time, and as his state develops, no one is left behind or less he takes the lead over the state. This spiritual essence is the essence of an individual; he is its representative contained in it and coming from it" (Hegel, 1993).
The cult of nation as a form of socio-centric religion helps to overcome the gravest crises possible to take place in one or another state. Thus, overcoming the Time of Troubles of the Russian State started approximately in 1611 and it was described by historian V.O. Kluchevskyi as follows: "Moscow State was a sight of complete destruction by the end of 1611... The state was turning into some formless and restless federation. But by the end of 1611, when the political forces had been broken down, RELIGIOUS AND NATIONAL POWERS BEGAN TO BE WOKEN UP, WHICH WERE TO RESCUE THE
DYING COUNTRY" (Novgorodcev, 1991). The expressions "the political forces had been broken down" and "religious and national powers began to be woken up" deserve special consideration in this historical general conclusion. Political forces are different political groups with their own interests while the national interest is able to unite those separate forces in order to save the State and nation.
The other impressive historical example is France overcoming the civil war caused by the Revolution of the 18th century. The slogan united the French State by Napoleon Bonaparte was the following: "There is to be no any fractions - the nation is first of all". As a rule, a civil war, especially prolonged one in the history of the mankind could be got over with the help of centripetal forces, creation of some new sacred objects containing a way of connection of a nation with God, gods and other forms of the Absolute, renovation of that connection in the historical past, and conviction that the connection is the historical mission of that nation.
And as a rule, a national form of socio -centric religion is connected with contraposition of a nation and other nations, and that contraposition can have both positive and negative forms. In order the cult of some nation is not to be turned into striving for total destruction of the integrity of other nations, socio-centric religions very often join each other and change for the level of cosmo-centric religions, where that nation finds its integrity not only inside itself but also outside in the Universe, the Absolute and Cosmos to which all the other nations and each individual belong. That very combination of the national form of socio-centric and cosmo-centric kinds of religion is seen in the concept "conciliarity", which was formed and fixed in the Russian philosophy of the 19th and the first third of the 20th centuries.
Philosopher L.S. Frank writes proving the substantial quality of the Russian national spirit:
Fig. 2 Semen Ludvigovich Frank - Russian philo sopher (1877 - 1950)
"The Russian spirit is distinct for its aspiration for wholeness, universal and concrete completeness, the last and supreme value and base; because of this aspiration, the Russian mind and spiritual life are religious not only in their essence (for we can assert that any creative work is like that), but religious feeling also penetrates into all external spheres of spiritual life. The Russian spirit, so to say, is religious to the core" (Frank, 1992) (Fig. 2).
In this connection, these thinkers consider conciliarity as "the inner harmony of living individual soul and super individual unity" (Frank, 1992). While the national substance of the idea "conciliarity" becomes a universal one in S.L. Frank's philosophy, philosophers S.N. Bulgakov and P.A. Florenskyi, on the contrary, insist on its special Russian Orthodox religious meaning. Though fascism and racism phenomena of the 20th century locked the positive qualities of a concrete nation's cult for researchers for a long time, nevertheless on the grounds of the mankind's history we can see that the national form of socio-centric religion very often has objectively positive meaning by uniting the nation in the periods of civil wars and crises.
Every kind of social life includes religious aspect. That was realized by both the founders of the ancient polis and the Roman Empire and the English thinkers created the theory of the contemporary State. If a society is consciously modeled on the religious base by its individuals, then an individual, having given his best abilities to the society, receives more energy from that society, as he is to be answered by the whole spirituality of the society. As K. Manheim remarked, "the advantage of spiritually rich social model is in the fact that an individual cannot sink below a certain level" (Manheim, 1994). At the same time, there is a danger for an individual in the society, steadily organized according to a certain religious model, to assimilate that model as a habit and custom by refusing from his own will and making empty conventions of some social activities. Then there appears a peculiar "degeneracy" of that form of social integrity, some kind of "tiredness" of the society, which demands concrete efforts for renovation of the principles of integrity. If such efforts are not made by social subjects, the society's integrity becomes unstable and exposed to destruction.
As it's been mentioned above, society can and sometimes has to turn to one or another form of cosmo-centric religions in order to make or restore social integrity. The example of conscious turning to such form is the adoption of Christianity by Prince Vladimir and so-called "the Baptism of Rus". The same situation can be observed in the periods of appearance of Islam in the Arabian world or adoption of Buddhism as the State religion in medieval Japan. Therefore, after consideration of the way of modelling of social integrity in some forms of socio-centric religions (all forms are still far from being discovered), it is necessary to explore another aspect of this problem, that is the way of modelling of society's integrity in cosmo-centric religions.
The difference of the models of social integrity based on cosmo-centric religions is connected with different forms of religious experience.
1. Religious experience as personal contact with the Absolute.
The question is of mystical experience gained by its adherents, who find the firm belief that there is nothing more true and important for their existence than personal contact with the Absolute. The significance of society for those people is that they serve as transmitters of spiritual and religious experience to the following generations without dependence on any concrete and present conditions. Besides, such bearers of religious experience reveal the sense of secluded existence to society in contrast to the public openness preventing from the deep spiritual life.
2. Religious experience as spiritual communication of people inside one or another community or group. The cementing value of society lies in aspiration of the people with such experience for mutual aid, true comradeship, and group unity based on the spiritual base. Those people believe that such relations has absolute character (there is God in them or they are sanctified by the gods-protectors of various unions), and their activities are quite contrary than those ones of mystics keeping off any forms of the "mundane" contact.
3. Religious experience as conservation of traditional conventions such as dedication of churches, carrying out of certain rites, participation in one or another kind of religious ceremonies. The significance of this kind of religious experience for the integrity of society is in the fact that sometimes conservation of ritual religiosity is much more important than adoption of subtlest ideas and complicated religious doctrines for in such a case a religious impulse can be received in a certain form from outside, the meaning of which can be envisaged and planned.
Most probably, the social integrity does not need in one or another form of religious experience, but its totality is important, which at different moments displays itself either in personal, either in communal or in traditionally ritual forms. Therefore, one of the most important problems of the contemporary social organization is the reflection over what is necessary for the modelling of integrity of this society and which concrete actions are to be undertaken by the social subjects, who are at the sources of conscious modelling of social unity.
Specificities of the philosophical way of modelling of integrity at social being level
Having defined the content of "truth" concept as modelling of integrity at different levels of human being, i. e. individual, social, and universal ones, we have considered a few forms of that kind of modelling. While approaching to the end of the analysis of the problem of truth in its present forms, it is necessary to consider the philosophical models of reflection over social integrity as one of the ontological forms of truth. The question is of the models of thinking based on the social (collective) foundation.
Philosophical formulation of the problem of social integrity takes such a form: "Is truth available to a human personal cognition, and if it is, then is his cognition always personal in itself?" (Trubetzkoy, 1994) (Fig. 3). We have tried to answer to the first part of the question in our previous research-work. As for the second part of the question, since the Reformation period, the European philosophy has been accepting the principle of personal thinking without any proves and independently of its trends. Mysticism of the Modern History foresaw the base of personal thinking in the revelation, rationalism did in the process of logical and rational thinking, and empiricism did in experience. But still there was another line connected with the Ancient
Fig. 3 Eugenyi Nikolaevich Trubetzkoy - Russian philosopher (1863 - 1920)
philosophy where the individual thinking was associated with the world elements. Thus, Heraclites thought that a man receives the rational source by inhaling the world fire as Logos-fire. Those, who were far from the fire-Logos, became insane and plunged into the world of unconscious. Socrates saw the source of personal mind in the universal mind as well, and Aristotle defined the rational source as universal and catholic. Scholastics and theologians of the Middle Ages proceeded from the imperfection of personal consciousness and gave priority to the conciliar consciousness of Church but they didn't give meaning to the philosophical comprehension of conciliar nature of consciousness in full measure. The Philosophy of the Modern History based on protestant subjectivism and priority of personal will proclaimed the absolute autonomy of thinking "Ego" as a separate personality but by the middle of the 19th and especially in the 20th centuries the European philosophy including the Russian philosophy more often turns to consideration of trans-subjective forms of consciousness and
way of thinking resting upon the principle of stipulation of the personal consciousness by the living collective consciousness of the mankind. That principle is fixed in different philosophical conceptions from the mentioned concept of inter-subjectivity in E. Gusserl's philosophy, the conception of conciliar consciousness in the Russian religious philosophy and including the concept of noosphere elaborated in the philosophy of Teyar de Chardin and V.I. Vernandskyi.
In any case, all of the arguments of the supporters of priority of the collective consciousness of the mankind regarding personal one can be deduced to the following: "...only through acknowledgement of such organic conciliarity of human consciousness we are able to comprehend how it can generally and necessarily cognize reality; it is only then that we can apprehend how people psychologically and logically understand each other and all the things, agree with each other in rational and positive cognition of the objective universal truth independently of any personal consciousness. Just then we can understand possible impeccability of every individual mind through cognition of some universal and indispensable truths at experience and mathematics (and at metaphysics in some other cases)" (Trubetzkoy, 1994).
In this connection, we shall use the concept «model of thinking» and consider such models of thinking, which presuppose the possibility of realization of positive unity of society as the most harmonious way of individual and social existence. In this context, the concept «model of thinking» is contently defined as the model by which an individual is implicitly guided in every moment while approaching to comprehension and discovering of one or another object (including himself).
There are such models of thinking which can't be adequately perceived without exposure of their social basis. That principle has its own
history in the history of philosophy. There is no doubt that the serious start of its formulation and argument was made by K. Marx, but his conception of social conditionality of thinking has negative character in many respects as it is based on criticism and disclosure of ideology of certain strata and classes of society. The next stage was F. Nietzhe's philosophy of life who deduces gnosiology from so-called instincts of the mankind and, in this connection, he uses categories of «aristocratic» and «democratic» cultures understood as a certain model of thinking depending on society. Nietzhe's philosophy is closely connected with Z. Freud's explorations, where again human thinking is considered as concealed form of instincts.
The most serious researches of social conditionality of models of thinking were carried out by L. Lukach following K. Marx's strategy and connecting his own theory with criticism of ideology on the whole. Then it should be distinguished M. Scheller's conception, where man's essential characteristics were deduced from the «Realm of the Universal Man» and the most necessary aim of the present time is seen in «smoothing» of different (class, cultural, and national) social logics by which the representatives of different social groups are guided. As for the philosophy of our country of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries, as it's been mentioned in the analysis of V.S. Solovyov's philosophy, it is primarily based on the principle of universal unity: that principle means priority of social Sophia (divine wisdom) as an ideal prototype of human creative work for thinking processes including thinking regarding individual thinking.
The most important step in the exploration of the social bases of thinking was taken by the founder of the contemporary sociology of knowledge German philosopher K. Manheim (Manheim, 1994). Through guiding by the
basic conclusions of K. Manheim's sociology of knowledge, there can be asserted that, on the one hand, there is no such metaphysical essence, group spirit cognizing by sublimation over separate individuals whose ideas an individual just reproduces, but, on the other hand, an individual himself just relatively makes the model of thinking that comes from him. Individual thinking can be conceived only in its concrete connection with historical and social situations, that is not people and separate individuals who think. An individual takes part in a certain process of thinking, which appeared long before that individual. He ".. .finds himself in an inherited situation, in a possession of the models of thinking appropriate for the given situation and tries to work out the inherited models of answers or to replace them by the others in order to react to some new challenges as consequences of the transformation of the given situation" (Manheim, 1994).
Individuals act together in variously organized groups inside society. Those groups either seek to change the surrounding reality or to preserve it in the present form. Such strivings bring to appearance of thinking of certain groups of people with their own specificities. These models of thinking are to be considered in order to comprehend the fundamental processes bringing to formation of society's integrity. In order to keep philosophical implication at the research of the models of thinking, let us turn to the following gradation of concepts - «social rationalism» and «social irrationalism». Let us discern the influence of the models of thinking on formation of social integrity after consideration of the contents of these concepts.
If rationalism as a style of individual thinking can be defined as existence of a certain intellectual act by which an individual seeks to conceive objectively existing things and events and one way or another achieves his aim, then the concept «social rationalism» means neither
existence of intellectual act nor some number of actions taken by the whole society or a social group, moreover the actions is organized in such a way that they bring to achievement of the set aim, and each action has its own special purpose in that process. The actions that might be characterized as phenomena of social rationalism are usually to be calculated and, consequently, can be controlled and organized and also planned. Those types of society with prevalence of inclination for social rationalism are mainly constructed as distinct social hierarchy for social rationalism demands a special kind of social personality as permanently reflecting individual capable of abstractly thinking and rational adaptation to the most various life phenomena. Such individuals «refusing» simple following the elements of life are very few. Those are the organizers holding the summit of social hierarchy of the society, and if the number of social situations requiring purposeful regulation increases, then the number of elite organizers able to regulate, on the contrary, reduces for much keener intellectual and organization abilities are demanded from them. Hence, reliance on «natural and historical processes» is not enough for cementation of society's integrity. There is an increase of specialization of social traits and denial of ability to judge of a common member of society and transfer of that ability to elite organizers. In this connection, social integrity is always in danger and demands some special efforts, that's why it is necessary that one or another brightly expressed form of socio-centric religion is to appear, the specificity of which depends on the nature of cultural time and space of the society's existence.
The content of the idea «social irrationalism» also differs from the concept «individual irrationalism». First of all, it is necessary to remark that social irrationalism is a direct consequence of social rationalism. The society cultivating social rationalism sooner or later organizes itself as a
conglomeration of various social groups taking their definite places in the social hierarchy. A separate individual falls under uncontrolled influence of his unconscious inclinations inside a big social group much easier than an individual isolated from the mass or included in a small stable and traditional group (in a family, for example). Besides, social rationalism brings to the fact that it purposefully organizing social events furthers the supplantation and suppression of a whole range of unconscious processes. Therefore, as a rule, social rationalism and social irrationalism exist together in the society raising antinomies and crises destroying its wholeness.
But if the organizing source of social rationalism is evidently and purposefully aimed at social unity, then cementing role of social irrationalism is not so obvious as that one in the age of the Roman Empire when great efforts were made to organize mass activities, through which the unity of society was strengthened on the unconscious level. The necessity of special creation of new forms of socio-centric religions influencing on the collective unconscious in the situations when released irrationality threatens the unity of society is obvious today as never.
The society correctly organized organically forms its desires directing them to creation of cultural values or to the simple and pure «joy of life» not destroying its wholeness in disorder. Those are the functions of «sports», «national celebrations», concerts at stadia, etc.
Thus, social irrationality is a danger not in itself but in its quality when it takes the leading part in the social activities, which are to be extremely rationalized. First and foremost, the question is of the sphere of political rights and the sphere of government of society. Though, the situation is always extremely contradictory here. If the sphere of government of society outwardly and inwardly represents a correctly organized mechanism, then, on the contrary,
there might be expected with fear that sooner or later the supplanted irrational and unconscious source would display itself to the even greater degree of violence and blood the more correctly and organized it is represented at the moment. It is impossible not to remember the mechanistic accuracy of mass violence in German of the 1930s and also other historical facts confirming that theoretical supposition.
There appears a necessity to understand if it is possible to preserve social unity just for some time at least or society is always doomed to calamities and ruptures, which sooner or later will destroy both society's wholeness and that one of the individuals as society's members. This research is purely theoretical and so it is possible to advance hypotheses about planning of stable and integral society on condition that those stability and integrity are to be constructed not from outside, but from inside, i.e. with a certain style of thinking implicit for the majority of individuals as members of some concrete society. Moreover, it is necessary to broaden the content of «thinking» concept by including visual, audile, sensory and other kinds of thinking (Zhukovskyi et al., 1991). If it is enough to make up a theoretical model on the theoretical stage of elaboration of this problem, then that is not sufficient for social practice and there appears the need in some kinds of social actions carried out consciously and, perhaps, systematically. The problem is not only the government of a state and economy but also special and conscious formation of some social style of thinking at society's level. Conscious statement of one or another style of thinking consists of planning of vision, audition, sense of touch, sense of smell, taste and their synthesis in integral images producing the expected impulses both from a concrete individual and from social groups and society on the whole. Creative but not destroying character of these impulses producing a certain style of thinking is determined by the
central stem around which they get together, videlicet by the aim for the sake of which both individual and social actions are carried out. The essential nature of that aim is aspiration for something absolute and universal, videlicet aspiration for the unity, which has different individual and social characteristics, i.e. the form of ego-centric and socio-centric religions.
Having defined the ontological content of truth as wholeness of being and the content of true being as modelling of that wholeness in individual or social activity by an individual or society, we have given the religious base of various concrete forms of truth and true being through the concept of religion as aspiration of an individual or society for the Absolute and the unity.
EXAMPLE The cultural and logical model of socio-centrism of the old Russian state of the 15th and the 16th centuries
The stages of development of the ideas of the Old Russian socio-centrism: economic, political and legal, and ideological factors
In the first instance, it is necessary to explain why it is possible to consider the selected period of the Russian State of the 15th and the 16th centuries as an example of modelling of integrity at social being level. Let us turn to some historical facts in the history of the Old Russian State. The historical facts emphasize that the process of centralization of the Old Russian State and formation of socio-centrism in Old Russia (Rus) are long processes complicated with the constant inner contradictions at State system level - that is struggle of secular with church powers, and at the Old Russian religiosity level - that is search for the stronghold of the Old Russian State in monasticism or nationality, support of heretical doctrines (as a matter of fact that is support of a certain aspect of the Christian doctrine) or the
Orthodox Church, and in the choice of a social model of the State system.
Let us retrace the evolution of formation of the centralized Old Russian State from the historical point of view. The process of centralization of the Old Russian State connected with the development of Moscow started in the 16th century.
It can be considered that the starting point of development of the centralized Old Russian State is the 16th century when economic and political and legal bases of socio-centric unity were formed. In the 16th century the main political figures in forming of the centralized state are prince Ivan Danilovich Kalita (1325 - 1340), who starts enlarging of the territory of Moscow princedom by purchase of the lands around Moscow and who also gets the right to Vladimir's Grand Princedom from the Golden Horde's khans in 1339, and metropolitan Peter (? - 1326), who decides to transfer the metropolitan's throne to Moscow in 1326. Moreover, the condition of metropolitan's transfer was building of the Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin, which metropolitan Peter chose as his burial vault. Henceforth Moscow is selected as the place of repose of the Old Russian metropolitans: «If you listen to me, my son, and raise the temple of the Most Pure Mother of God in this town, you will be glorified more than other princes and so will be your sons, grandsons, and all of your generations, and this town will be celebrated among the other Russian towns. Its enemies will be disgraced and God will be glorified in it; the sainted hierarchs will live, and my bones will also be laid in it» (Metropolitan Peter's hagiography, bishop Prohor, 1326) (Fig. 4). The military-political and religious struggle for independence of the Tatars and the Golden Horde is of no less importance. Just the 14th century is marked by the significant victory won by the Russian army over the Tatars in 1380. Firstly, Moscow Prince's victory over
Fig. 4. Icon. Mitropolitan Peter with hagiography. Dionisyi. XVI century
the Tatars fortifies the position of Moscow as a centre uniting Russian people. Secondly, it is interesting to note the fact that relatively peaceful coexistence of the Old Russian princes and khans of the Golden Horde (contractual relations) turned into victorious struggle of the Russian princes in that period when the Golden Horde was planning to adopt Islam as the basic religion, what demonstrates that the antagonism between the Russians and the Tatars had not only political and economic base, but also religious opposition.
The Byzantine Empire's fall in 1453 was the main event of the development of the centralized Old Russian State in the 15th century, and after that Old Russia became the only big orthodox state in the world. Byzantium was the legislator of religious «modus vivendi» for Old Russia from the moment of adoption of Christianity by Old Russia: Byzantium appointed the Russian metropolitans and gave the archetypes of icon-painting and icon-painters. Thus, the search for a national peculiarity is combined with disappearance of the centre in the 15th century,
by which Old Russia was guided in its religious search. In many respects, that event became a starting-point of formation of social integrity at ideological level.
The philosophical ideas and religious search of the 15th and the 16th centuries allow to consider exactly this period of the history of the Old Russian State as a period of ideological and religious unity of the Russian people. Within the framework of this research, it will be interesting to turn to a study of such philosophic ideas of the Old Russian thinkers as Joseph Volotzkyi's absolute monarchy conception and «Moscow is the Third Rome» conception formulated in its well-known form by the monk Philorey from Elizarov monastery near Pskov in «The Epistle to the Astrologers» for the first time (1523 or 1524). On the whole, the period of the 15th and the 16th centuries can be comprehended as the process of active search for a religious way and as the process of formation of the ideological element of the centralized state for the Russian people. In that period different heretical movements were developing actively (the Non-Possessors and the Judaizers) and little by little different religious tendencies began to give such ideas that presented harmonious unity of the Russian people with God, and Josephism suggested the basis of the very socio-centric religious unity.
The Old Russia's development of the 15th century demonstrates crystallization of the ideology of the Old Russian socio-centrism into standard models. The Tsar of the all Russian lands Ivan the Terrible IV (1530 - 1584) was crowned in 1547 presenting himself as an individual personification of socio-centric religiosity and, thus, possessing sacred power as the God-chosen tsar. The second model crystallizing the principles of the centralized Old Russian State is the Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin on the Red Square (1555 - 1561).
Thus, the evolutional formation of socio-centrism in the Old Russian State in the period examined passes the following stages:
1. Political and legal and economic bases are developed in the course of centralization of the Old Russian State around Moscow and Moscow prince, and there is an economic and political preparation for socio-centrism of Old Russia in the 14th and the first half of the 15th centuries.
2. The ideological, spiritual and religious program and the basis of social unity of Old Russia are elaborated in the second half of the 15th and at the beginning of the 16th centuries: the ideas of God-choiceness of the absolute monarch are developed, and Old Russia becomes the centre of the Orthodox world.
3. In the 15th century the gained ideological unity and socio-centrism find their embodiment in the exemplary image of the Tsar of all Old Russia Ivan the Terrible and in the images accentuating the national peculiarity of Old Russia with the Old Russian tent-shape type architecture - in particular, the main temple of the Old Russian State of the 16th century - the Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin.
And so, within the frameworks of this research, let us dwell on the specificity of formation of the spiritual component of the Old Russian State's socio-centrism, which took its place mainly in the 15th and the 16th centuries.
Specificities of the religious modelling of the Old Russian State's integrity in 15th and the 16th centuries
This part of the research is devoted to the answer to the question how the religious ideas of Old Russia in the 15th and the 16th centuries favoured the formation of the Russian religiosity in its socio-centric aspect.
The religious situation of those centuries was much influenced by the fact of the Byzantine Empire's downfall and comprehension of the idea
Fig. 5. The Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin on the Red Square. Moscow. 1555 - 1561
«Moscow is the Third Rome» verbally formulated by the monk Philorey: «Two Romes have already fallen, but the third stands up, and the fourth is not to be» (quote with book Malinin, 1901). Thus, the idea of God-choiceness of the Old Russian State for the sake of the Orthodoxy gets its form. It calls for a fixation of the idea of Moscow as the third Rome, i.e. the country, which, on the one hand, inherits the Orthodoxy and, on the other hand, distinguishes its own (third) peculiarity of the orthodox religiosity's existence. Hence, an intensive search for a national peculiarity of the Old Russian religiosity takes place in those centuries, which is characterized by the following phenomena of the religious life: development of the heretical doctrines, search for the Orthodoxy's national peculiarities, and appearance of the peculiar Old Russian tent-shape templar form
instead of the Byzantine cross-vaulting temple. The process of search for the national religious peculiarity takes its place simultaneously with the eschatological pendency and preparations of the Russian people for the Doomsday and the Judgment Day.
So, let us consider the main ideas of Old Russia's religious life in the 15th and the 16th centuries. This period is marked by coexistence of a large number of heretical doctrines, the branches of the Orthodoxy, and that is indicative of the intensive search for an appropriate model of religiosity for the Russian people within the frameworks of the Christian religion (providing harmonious relations of a person and God). And it is necessary to remark that the heretical movements had existed in Old Russia since the 12th century, and only at the
beginning of the 14th century they «came into the world» and started to be preached by their adherents.
The development of the heretical doctrines of this period indicates the fact of the intensive search for the «true» religiosity, which allows to gain harmonious unity of a person and God, and the ideal of harmony with God is obtaining Eden in the Christian religion. A believer traditionally seeks to obtain Eden in his own soul, but the aspirations for achievement of righteousness became intensified owing to the eschatological ideas inthose centuries. Indeed, 1492was expected to be the year of the «Second Advent», this year was supposed to be 7000 since the creation of the world, and the date was calculated on the basis of studying of the texts of the New Testament. The apocalyptic expectations firstly brought to the process of purification of the religious principles and, secondly, intensified the need of the national unity before the Doomsday.
So, let us consider the existence of religious contradictions before formation of socio-centric religiosity.
The heretical ideas of the 15th and the 16th centuries as the models
of alternative development of the Old Russian socio-centrism
Old Russia's religious life of the 15th and the 16th centuries in its contradictoriness to a certain extent can be compared with the religious searches of the first ecumenical councils when only the Christian conciliar view could determine which conception of the Christian religion was the only true one. And just the conciliar faith of the participants of the first ecumenical councils favoured adoption of the dogma of the Godhead's Trinity, acknowledgement of Christ's divine nature, establishment of the monastic life's rules, etc. Such a kind of the Orthodox religion had existed in Byzantium, was adopted by Old Russia,
and it existed without realization of the national religious peculiarity up to the 15th century.
But some specific peculiarities of the Russian religiosity had already appeared in the pre-Mongolian period: for instance, the religious feast of the Veil of the Mother of God established by Andrew Bogolubskyi (~ Theophilantropist) in the 12th century hadn't been known in Byzantium but it became wide-spread in Old Russia. The feast's origin is connected with a special actuality of the ideas of God's patronal attitude towards the Russian land and its people, and there is also a connection between the feast and Russia's nature finding materialization of the idea of the Veil of the Mother of God in snow. The feast of the Veil of the Mother of God kept its significant importance for Moscow state, which is testified by the building of the main Moscow temple on the Red Square dedicated to the feast of the Veil of the Mother of God in the 16th century. The feast's actuality is explained by the fact that, as stated above, it's the primal Orthodox Russian feast, which accentuates the national peculiarity of Old Russia, and that the Veil of the Mother of God is an evidence of the future Holy Virgin's intercession for the Russian people in the face of Christ on the Doomsday, and that is also an evidence of her permanent patronage.
Besides, the Russian religiosity's specificity in the period of Vladimir-and-Suzdal princedom's dominance over the others became the relations of a person and God according to the model of «devotion of a person to God in fear and trepidation», which is connected with the actuality of King David's Psalter where «fear and trepidation» in front of God is an inalienable trait of a Christian. The development of the Old Russia's religion of the posterior periods always had this aspect of fear in relations of a person and God and was realized in the relation of the Russian people and their tsar.
The ideas of obtainment of the national religious peculiarity became especially actual in the 15th century. How was the process of search for the national peculiarity proceeding? In the first instance, the Old Russian heretical doctrines of the 15th century had a possibility of revealing themselves and suggesting their own conception of comprehension of the Orthodoxy. On the whole, the heretical doctrines of the 15th century can be considered not merely as deviations from the Orthodox religion breaking the Divine commandments but also as some special ways of the Russian people's comprehension of the Orthodox religiosity.
The heresy of the Judaizers became widespread at the end of the 15th century. The heretical doctrine originated in the circle of Novgorod merchants preached the following to Mosaic laws, i.e. the Old Testament, by rejection of the laws of the New Testament for the following reasons: the heretics refuted the doctrine of the Trinity and Jesus Christ's divine nature. Besides, the Judaizers repudiated monasticism as an organ of Christian religious society for the Bible says nothing of monastic practice and monasticism had been established by the church fathers, i.e. by men. It is quite interesting to consider the heresy of Novgorod merchants from the positive point of view in the context of the ideas that the doctrines intentionally repudiated by the official culture were those vital forces which mainly formed the epoch's world outlook. Let us remark that the information on the heretical outlook is rather scanty and can be practically gathered only according to the officially maintained refutations, for instance, Joseph Volotzkyi's legend «Enlightener», and that does not allow to understand those people who shared the Judaizers' ideas in full measure. We can draw the following conclusions taking into account the fact that the heresy of the Judaizers was formed in the circle of freedom-loving Novgorod people,
who looked for the rational comprehension of religious phenomena, and where the doctrine of the «Strigolniks» had been developed with its main aim - direct communication with God out of church and religious rites and under the open sky. The Judaizers also sought after the rational comprehension of the Divine law, and the New Testament full of symbols and demanding sensible perception of divinity didn't satisfy the requirement, but the rational scheme of contact of a person with God was suggested in the Old Testament (human sin is a punishment from God, a person's good deed is a praise and reward from God, etc.). Besides, the Old Testament suggested direct contact of a person with God: there are God, a man, and Moses prophet to whom God declares His law. Thus, the heretical doctrine of the Judaizers supposed discovery of the rational base and clear and simple directions the following which would completely correspond to God's demands from a human being and allow to see a clear religious model of contact of God with a person in the Christian religion.
The heresy of the Judaizers was so strong at the time that in a certain moment there was a possibility of its official spreading for Moscow metropolitan Zosima was a representative of the Judaizers, and the heresy was also supported by the members of the princely family. That process was mainly prevented by the anti-heretical struggle of Joseph Volotzkyi whose efforts promoted the passage of the decree of heretics' capital punishment at Moscow council in 1504 (Fig. 6). Apart from Joseph Volotzkyi's struggle against the Judaizers, it is to be remarked that this branch of the Christian religion would never be officially supported. It would be rather strange if the Orthodox state, the Orthodox religion's stronghold and the «Third Rome» adopted Mosaic laws as a base - it would bring to repudiation of the ideas of the Third Empire and violation of the traditional development of the Old Russian
Fig. 6. The Icon Crucifixion. Dionisyi. 1500. The episode with expatriation of Judaizers by ortodox church
religiosity. It is interesting to remark that the early Christianity's decree of acknowledgement of Arianism (that also denied Jesus Christ's divine nature) as a heresy was also adopted in the decree of the council, which points to the process of formation of a new religion in its own way in the 15th and the 16th centuries.
The Judaizers didn't recognize churchdom, hierarchy, seizure of lands by the church, and
«bribes». We can tell that the religious ideas of the epoch are characterized with negation of religious status of monastery and monasticism as a whole. If monasticism was the stronghold of the Old Russian religiosity up to the 15th century (only monks provided people with spiritual defence through their prayers while cloisters as fortresses were physical defence of towns against attacks), then by the 15th and the 16th centuries
monastery lost its defensive power and ceded its care of people's physical and spiritual welfare to the God-chosen sovereign, which will be spoken of later.
The problem of religious unity of the nation in the light of apocalyptical ideas should be considered in detail. The «Revelation» text of Saint John the Divine tells about nations' presence before Christ on the Doomsday, not of an individual: «Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are made manifest» (the Revelation of Saint John the Divine - 5:4). Thus, in the 15th and the 16th centuries there appears the necessity of national unity for presence before God on the Doomsday. It should be also noted that while Old Russia turned to be the last Orthodox state, the Russian people realized themselves as God's nation chosen by God not only to save the true Orthodoxy, but, perhaps, also to become God's righteous people who are to be in Eden. The idea of God-choiceness of the Russian people is affirmed with the fact that the Orthodox feast of the Holy Trinity was established in the Old Russian State only in the 15th century when Sergey Radonezhskyi was alive, but not at the time of the Baptism of Rus. That can be explained by the event of Epiphany of the Holy Trinity to Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament that revealed them that the chosen people of Israel would descend from them.
The epoch's eschatological feelings directly influenced on the process of development of the Old Russian religiosity in its socio-centric aspect. Until 1492 the Old Russian people had been waiting for God's punishment for their sins and they were really frightened of the future justice. The mood of the Judaizers and the Non-Possessors came to light because of the eschatological feelings of the people who on the threshold of the Doomsday gave their lands and property to monasteries so
that the monks should pray and defend people, and it gave birth to anticlerical attitudes of the contra-cultural tendencies. We can assume that in spite of the fact that the expected «end of history» didn't happen, the God-chosen head of the state took upon him the right of «divine» judgement on earth. For instance, «Judgment-book» edited in 1497 can be considered as the most important legal document of the time of Ivan III, and during the ruling of Ivan the Terrible IV the ideas of God's punishment's embodiment in the earthly existence found their realization in the events of the oprichnina's period.
Thus, the main specificity of the Old Russian State's religious life in the 15th and the 16th centuries is an aspiration for finding of the national religious peculiarity: the territorial unity with Moscow as a centre had already been formed but it wasn't enough for the national identification. The epoch's religious life has an effect on the process of formation of the Russian character and to understand so called Russian national mentality means to turn back to this period. Such aspects of the Orthodox religion are actualized at that time:
A) the idea of God's patronage to the Russian people;
B) in spite of God's patronage to the Russian people, permanent realization of one's own sins became the most important thing and, as a consequence, permanent expectation of God's punishment. In those centuries it could be explained by the approaching end of the world and attitude to the mundane existence as something fatally sinful. Thus, there is to be formed an idea of great culpability of a human being who is always waiting for the punishment for his sins in fear;
C) as a result, the trial presence of a person and nation as a whole in the face of God can be conceived as the exemplary model of relations of God and a person.
Joseph Volotzkyi's religious and philosophical conception of the absolute monarchy
Two religious and philosophical doctrines were formed in Old Russia in the 15th and the 16th centuries. The first one is Josephism suggested by Joseph Volotzkyi (1440 - 1505) and the other - the Non-Possessors' movement formulated by Nilus of Sora (1433 - 1508). The Non-Possessors' movement of Nilus of Sora developed Byzantine doctrine of hesychasm that supposed separation of the church from the state and leaving the mundane affairs, for Church was understood as an institute primarily established not for the possession of physical power but for the care of the spiritual side of a human life. But this tendency wasn't widespread in those centuries. It is explained by the fact that the Hesychastic conception developed by Nilus of Sora supposes an individual contact of a person with God and a choice of an individual religious way while the conciliar (soboral) way of religious communication of a human being with God worked out by Joseph Volotzkyi was more actual for Old Russia of those centuries.
Joseph Volotzkyi's (Fig. 7) conception was developed from the idea of tsar's limited power over people in their mundane existence: «The tsars must be served with fear and trepidation as men having taken power from God and who are able to torture and be benefactors to people with their bodies, but not with their souls, and give them tsar's honours, but not those ones of God» (quote with book Zamalyaev, 1987). As for the idea of the absolute tsar's power, it is to take care of souls and bodies of its subjects. According to Volotzkyi, the physical care of the subjects means physical defence against foreign enemies and injustice, and the spiritual care includes deliverance from heretical discords inside the Orthodox doctrine. Monk Volotzkyi is one of the first Old Russian thinkers who developed the idea of the absolute tsar's power given by God. God-
choiceness of the Old Russian tsar is a traditional idea of the Orthodox Christianity: firstly, the Byzantine Empire had been ruled by the God-chosen emperors whose one of the main aims was intercession and sacrificial presence before Christ for all their people; secondly, there was formed an idea of Russian princes' resemblance to the Bible kings in the period of domination of Vladimir Princedom - for example, Andrew Bogolubskyi's ruling was compared with King David's reign.
Joseph's Volotzkyi's book «The Enlightener» became a handbook of tsar Ivan IV the Terrible (1530 - 1584) who was the exemplary personification of unification of secular (mundane) and church (divine) powers. Tsar Ivan the Terrible (Fig. 8) took the part of the absolute centre to provide social unity for the Old Russian State.
Socio-centric religiosity of the Old Russian State of the 15th and the 16th centuries
The ideological centralization of the Old Russian people took place in the situation of solution of the most difficult contradictions. The processes of centralization of the Old Russian State, national identification of the Russian people, search for an independent religious way as the «Third Rome», and national unity before the «end of the world» predetermined the formation of the Old Russian religiosity as socio-centric and national unity. The process of the most difficult choice of the form of existence of the Old Russian socio-centrism was proceeding in the 15th and the 16th centuries.
The contradictions of the religious situation were reflected in a choice of one of the ways of future development of the Orthodoxy in the Russian state. On the one hand, the heretical points of view suggested the direct unity of God and the God-chosen nation, which proceeded with keeping to the commandments given to Moses' people by God. On the other hand, there
Fig. 7. Icon. Saint Iosif Volotzkyi (1439 - 1515)
was formulated the theory of mediatory unity of the nation and God where the God-chosen tsar was the main mediator and representative of the Russian people in the face of God. Monasticism and church lost the possibility of realization of their mediation between people and God at that period as in reality they stopped keeping the Orthodox religiosity in its purity. There was a reason for necessity of toughening of the monastic regulations and keeping the church away from interfering in the mundane affairs as that participation hardly showed the connection of the clergy with religious spiritual life. The
decree of Moscow council of 1504 supporting the ideas of Josephism and passing the resolution of capital punishment of the heretics determined the choice of the Old Russian socio-centric religiosity - that was the choice of a model of relations of the nation and God through the mediation of the tsar's personage. The Russian tsar took upon himself personal responsibility for the Russian people's Orthodox purity in the face of God. The choice of that model was carried out not only in the way of peaceful conciliar adoption of a common decision of what kind of the Orthodoxy would exist in the Old Russian land but that was also a way of
savage reprisal with the heterodox people - the heretics' executions and annihilation of the whole dissenting and disobedient towns (for example, the bloody reprisal with Novgorod people among whom the heretical doctrines had appeared). We can suppose that the State's bloody cruelty didn't bring to active opposition and hatred of the people not only because of fear in the face of violence but as the result of the expectation of bloody executions before the «end of the world» in 1492, and, as a consequence, were received as the mankind's just punishment.
The social unity of the Old Russian State of the 15th and the 16th centuries consisted of the process of national unity demanded by the image of God contemporary to the epoch. The image of God is a judge asking for the answer to the nation's deeds, not those ones of a single person on the Doomsday in order they could enter the Eden and the Jerusalem of Above; that is also the image of God Who demands resigned corporal and spiritual service of many people to the only God. The national unity was forming in the process of search for the God's defence and patronage in the spiritual and mundane affairs and in the process of renewal of the ideas of the Orthodox religiosity. Moreover, the Old Russian socio-centric model presupposed the God-chosen tsar as the absolute mediator between people and God who could bring to his people the Divine Law and Word in his orders (those are the laws of the Holy Scripture which were the orientation of Ivan the Terrible in legislation and all domestic affairs and meditations) and who could pass people's expectations to God, defended them and satisfied all their needs. The architecture of the Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin on the Red Square can be considered as the exemplary image visually fixed that model of socio-centric relations.
Thus, the situation of the 15th and the 16th centuries was a real process of modelling
Fig. 8. Parsuna. Tsar Ioann Vasilievich the Terrible. XVII century
of socio-centric religious system in the Old Russian State. There was a quite natural process of the Russian people's self-identification and realization of their own peculiarity comparing with the other nations (in particular, the Tatars and Mongols, the Greeks) and peculiarity of their home Orthodoxy in its difference wth the Byzantine Orthodox, and, thus, the Russian people find their whole idea of themselves. At the same time, the process of sacrification of the tsar's personage takes place when the tsar obtains a function of a mediator between his people and God. The process of sacrification of the Old Russian tsar's personage is a heavy and more unnatural process. There can be given the following arguments as the proof of that unnatural process of the tsar's sacrification:
- it contradicts the conciliar nature of the Orthodoxy;
- it is at variance with the communal way of life in Old Russia;
- it contradicts the Slav sources for the Slavs had lived the communal way of life long before the conquerors arrived;
- it also contradicts the Bible where the tsar is not acceptable in the sight of God (God hardly agrees to give the Israelites their king in the Old Testament).
Consequently, the tsar was always demanded to give proves of his God-choiceness, affirmation of his rights and mediation between his people and God, and that gave the character of cruelty and bloodiness while formation of the socio-centrism in Old Russia in the 15th and the 16th centuries.
Resume
In that way the specificities of the modeling of the harmonious relationship between human and Absolute at social being level are consisted in the following theses:
1) The social integrity is allowed to reach harmonious relationship between a person and Absolute for every person of society provided the observance the law of this society by human.
2) The social integrity is formed on conditions of integrity of three factors: economical common weal, political and legal basis of social integrity and ideological basis for it.
3) The ideological basis of social integrity could be modelling in religious and philosophic doctrines.
4) The historical example of the modelling of social integrity could be found in the history of the 15th and 16th centuries in the Old Russia. The process of social integrity's modelling in this period is characterized by the territorial centralization the Russian lands around Moscow, by the growing of economical common weal, by making of unified political and lawful basis («Judgment-book» edited in 1497), by the formation of ideological basis for integrity of the Old Russia state.
5) The ideological basis of social integrity of the Old Russia state is formed by two main
processes. On the one hand it is the repression by orthodox Russian church of the religious opposition - the heresies Judaizers and Non-Possessor's - "alive" religious ideas. On the other hand it is the creation of the official religious doctrine with the central idea of the absolutely monarchy - Josephism.
6) In the result it is possible to choose the following factors as the components of the social integrity of the Old Russia state. The first factor is the process of national self-identification of Russian nationality as the unique orthodox nation in the world after the end of the Byzantine Empire. The second factor is the fact of the sacrification of Russian ruler. The Byzantium example of the sacrification of the ruler was adopted by Russia in this period. And it was not an evolution way of development for Russia, because before the Russian ruler has the role of invitee person for the protection of Russian land. The third factor is the concept of the absolutely monarchy, which is cultivated in the period of the end of 15th century. The concept of absolutely monarchy means that the ruler, the tsar has the power not only over the physical human existence, but also over the spiritual human existence.
7) The socio-centrism of Moscow Russia in such way is based on the necessity of the strict obedience of every person of the society to the power of the tsar. And the tsar in his turn is responsible for righteous of every person of the society to the God. The punishment for the sins in such situation is included in the tsar's power. And the result of it is the specific of the Old Russian's socio-centrism based on the cruelty and severity of the tsar's power, where the tsar is the mediator between a person and the God.
References
1. A. Kazharov, "The role of socio-political Byzantium doctrines in the development of state's conceptions of Moscow Russia", in the thesis of candidate's of political science, (Moscow, 2006), in Russian.
2. D. Krapchunov, "The Russian heresies as the phenomena of cultural breaking on the border of XV-XVI ages", in the author's abstract of candidate's philosophic science thesis, (Novgorod, 2004), in Russian.
3. D. Pivovarov, "Religion", in Contemporary philosophic dictionary, ed. by V.E. Kemerov (London, Frankfurt on Main, Paris, Luxembourg, Moscow, Minsk: Panprint, 1998), 195, in Russian.
4. E. Suvorina, "The idea of statehood in Russian classical culture", in candidate's of science thesis of philosophic science, (Tambov, 2004), in Russian.
5. Filorey, "The epistle to the Astrologers", in "Old monk Filorey of Eleazarov cloister and his epistles", ed. by A.N. Malinin (Kiev, 1901), 383, in Russian.
6. G.V.F. Hegel, "The lectures on philosophy of history", (Sank-Petersburg.: Science, 1993), 102, in Russian.
7. I. Volotzkyi, "The Enlightener", (http://www.wco.ru/biblio/books/iosifv1/Main.htm), in Russian.
8. I. Volotzkyi, "The word with blame of heretics", in "Monuments of Ancient Russian literature (the end of the 15th - the beginning of 16th centuries)", (Moscow: Fiction, 1984), in Russian.
9. I. Volotzkyi, in "Philosophic ideas in mediaeval Russia", A.F.Zamaliaev, (Leningrad: Science, 1987), in Russian.
10. K. Manheim, "The diagnosis of our time", (Moscow: Lawer, 1994), 9. 528, in Russian.
11. P. Novgorodcev, "About social ideal", (Moscow: Pressa, 1991), 572, in Russian.
12. Prokhor bishop, "Metropolitan Peter's hagiography", (http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/jrh11/ petrmetpar.doc), in Russian.
13. Psalm-book, (Moscow: Gift, 2006), in Russian.
14. R. Aslanov, "Formation of the authority's vertical in Russia: historical-lawful analysis", in the thesis of candidate's law science, (Moscow, 2005), in Russian.
15. R. Steiner, "The substance of social problem of vital necessities in present and future", (Caluga: Spiritual perception, 1992), in Russian.
16. Revelation of Saint Joann the Divine, "New Testament", (http://apokalipcic.ru/index.php?id_ menu=29), chapter 15, in Russian.
17. S. Trubetzkoy, "Writings", (Moscow, Thought, 1994), 492, 495, in Russian.
18. U. Bulichev, "The problem of cultural-historical uniqueness of Russia as the subject of philosophical research", in doctor's thesis of philosophic science, (Sank-Petersburg, 2005), in Russian.
19. V. Kalashnikov, "The subjective factors and objective conditions of stable society's development: on the sources of Byzantium and the Ancient Russia", in the thesis of doctor's philosophic science, (Krasnoyarsk, 2003), in Russian.
20. V. Zhukovskyi, "The Ancient Russian art", (Krasnoyarsk, 2007), in Russian.
21. V. Zhukovskyi, "Visual substance", Zhukovskyi V.I., Pivovarov D.V., (Sverdlovsk, 1991), in Russian.
