Excerpt From “Why Read Pavel Florensky?”

Excerpt From Why Read Pavel Florensky by John P. Burgess

After Solovki, beyond Death

Florensky’s work was largely forgotten in the Soviet Union until the late 1960s, when individual essays were republished or published for the first time. His work on religious philosophy and on art won interest from Soviet intellectuals who were disenchanted with Marxist-Leninist ideology. Today, Florensky is regarded as one of the most significant Russian thinkers of the early twentieth century. Because of his intellectual achievements in a wide variety of fields, including physics and electrical engineering, he has been called Russia’s Leonardo da Vinci or Blaise Pascal.

Florensky is not well known in the English speaking world, however. Translations of several key works did not appear until the late 1990s; only in 2010 was a major English biography published. Much of his correspondence remains available only in Russian. Reading and understanding Florensky are further complicated by a writing style that sometimes seems deliberately convoluted and obscure. Moreover, some of his ideas, such as his “Sophiology” or his privileging same-sex friendship over male-female marriage, have proven highly controversial. Indeed, in many Orthodox circles in Russia, he has been and continues to be regarded with suspicion. Scholars in the West have been especially troubled by evidence that he was anti-Semitic and that he glorified absolutist political rule.

Why, then, read Pavel Florensky? In an era in which pressing concerns of this world—political, social, technological, and material—so easily become all-consuming, Florensky directs us to the “other”—heavenly, divine—world that is always near us and around us but that we so easily miss. As he probes the mystical depth of all that exists, he teaches us to attend also to the “otherness” of the people and things with which we share “this” world—to enter into their unique existence, where we will rediscover ourselves. We will learn to treat the created order with reverence, to live in right relation with one another, and to open ourselves to a transcendent dimension of life.

Florensky can be approached from many angles—philosophical, historical, artistic, and scientific. This book focuses on his contributions to Christian theology. It is important from the outset to note that, for Florensky, Christianity, particularly as guarded by the Orthodox Church, expresses what is true for humans of every time and place. His Christianity helped him make sense of insights that he had gained over a lifetime both from personal experience and from the many different cultures, philosophies, and religions that he had studied.

In our time, which some call “postmodern,” when we are so aware of human difference, we are skeptical about claims to universal truth. Florensky offers us a way beyond our impasse. He challenges us to conceive of a multiplicity that is also a unity, and vice versa. What appears as contradictory to instrumental reason is nevertheless true according to the reasoning that characterizes Christian faith: there can be no difference without oneness, and there can be no oneness without difference.

After years of pursuing truth through mathematics, the natural sciences, Greek antiquity, ancient religions, and Western idealist philosophy, Florensky embraced Orthodox Christianity, eventually becoming a priest. Many times, as he participated in the liturgy, he would have proclaimed, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the Trinity one in essence and undivided.” Here, for him, is the primal expression of a multiplicity that is also a unity. The Trinity is the truth that is Truth as inscribed in all of existence.

Florensky sought to understand that truth-Truth, to experience it as a living presence, and to witness to it, until the henchmen of the gulag took his life. May the Lord have mercy on Fr. Pavel Florensky. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord” (Rev. 14:13).

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