The concept of spiritual wisdom of Joachim Florsky and its connection with Russian Christian epistemology

Oleg V. Par­ilov
Nizh­ny Nov­gorod Acad­e­my of the Min­istry of inter­nal affairs of Rus­sia
Rus­lan V. Sobko (Hieromonk Lau­rent)
Reli­gious Orga­ni­za­tion — Spir­i­tu­al Edu­ca­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion of High­er Edu­ca­tion «Nizh­ny Nov­gorod The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary of the Nizh­ny Nov­gorod Dio­cese of the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church (Moscow Patri­ar­chate)»

The con­cept of spir­i­tu­al wis­dom of Joachim Florsky and its con­nec­tion with Russ­ian Chris­t­ian epis­te­mol­o­gy

Abstract.The pur­pose of the arti­cle is to study the orig­i­nal Chris­t­ian epis­te­mol­o­gy of the medieval Ital­ian thinker-mys­tic Joachim Florsky. The tasks are to con­sid­er the atti­tude of the offi­cial Catholic Church to the Flo­ri­an abbot; Joachim’s views on scholas­ti­cism, his con­cep­tion of spir­i­tu­al wis­dom (spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing); the con­nec­tion of the epis­te­mo­log­i­cal con­struc­tions of the Cal­abri­an abbot with the East­ern Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion and Russ­ian reli­gious phi­los­o­phy of the 19th cen­tu­ry. The method­olog­i­cal basis of the arti­cle is the total­i­ty of the fol­low­ing meth­ods: hermeneu­ti­cal method (author’s inter­pre­ta­tion of mod­ern for­eign and medieval Latin texts), com­par­a­tive-his­tor­i­cal method, his­tor­i­cal and log­i­cal uni­ty, analy­sis and syn­the­sis, anal­o­gy.
The results obtained and the main find­ings of the study. Joachim’s work demon­strates the vivid vari­ety of epis­te­mo­log­i­cal doc­trines of the late Euro­pean Mid­dle Ages. As opposed to scholas­ti­cism, he under­stands the con­cept of spir­i­tu­al knowl­edge (doc­t­ri­na spir­i­tu­alis), first of all, as an expe­ri­ence of expe­ri­enc­ing faith. Joachim’s sci­en­tif­ic method and goal of cog­ni­tion result from his monas­tic life: dis­cussing the sub­ject of love (dis­ser­ta­tio car­i­tatis), he puts the wis­dom of the monks (sapi­en­tia mona­cho­rum), above the wis­dom of doc­tors and scholas­tics (sapi­en­tia doc­to­rum). The source of the reli­gious thought of the Cal­abri­an abbot is the Litur­gy: not the read­ing and exer­cise of the mind, but prayer, praise to God in the singing of the psalms is the true ori­gin of truth. The con­nec­tion between Joachim’s epis­te­mo­log­i­cal con­struc­tions and his key his­to­rio­soph­i­cal ideas is evi­dent, in par­tic­u­lar, the end of his­to­ry – the era of the Holy Spir­it – will reveal the trans­fig­u­ra­tion of man and dis­cov­er the full­ness of his spir­i­tu­al knowl­edge. Thus, the short­est path to true knowl­edge is monas­tic prac­tice. The ontol­o­gism of cog­ni­tion, the inter­pre­ta­tion of true knowl­edge as the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing faith, the asser­tion of epis­te­mol­o­gy on the foun­da­tion of litur­gi­cal prac­tice, love and per­fec­tion of the spir­it – in these fea­tures Joachimism’s con­nec­tion with the East­ern Chris­t­ian and Russ­ian reli­gious tra­di­tions is evi­dent.

Key­words: Euro­pean Mid­dle Ages, scholas­ti­cism, Joachim Florsky’s epis­te­mol­o­gy, spir­i­tu­al wis­dom, Russ­ian reli­gious phi­los­o­phy.

DOI: 10.5840/dspl20181225

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