Barbarians and wise men

Barbarians and wise men https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/print/5537207.html&xid=17259,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265,15700271,15700283&usg=ALkJrhis9cpf1hwxpaSHd2n9GYIL9DYfMQprint version November 25, 2019 17:02 https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/4305415.html&xid=17259,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265,15700271,15700283&usg=ALkJrhjHacetxdNg1Od_u4vVhNL-kK76Zghttps://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/632651.html&xid=17259,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265,15700271,15700283&usg=ALkJrhiQgZJ-o8VRKMUJ6tk5mSaZeu--DQInterview with the Chairman of the Synodal Department for Relations of the Church with Society and the Media V.R. https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/632651.html&xid=17259,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265,15700271,15700283&usg=ALkJrhiQgZJ-o8VRKMUJ6tk5mSaZeu--DQhttps://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://rg.ru/&xid=17259,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265,15700271,15700283&usg=ALkJrhgVuTVlAPyuS3SbGU8SLmO39D5kswLegends of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta (No. 265 (8023)). it will be easy for them, and it will be useful for you. And I chose four biographies for the special course “Spiritual and Intellectual Foundations of Western Culture” - Augustine, Francis, Thomas Aquinas and Luther. This was optional for third-year students. I remember Vyazemsky asked me after the first lesson: how many people were and who? Nine, I answer, I give names (including Zara Migranyan, daughter of Andranik Movsesovich). Oh says the elite! To me, yes, excellent students came. Then the elective ended, but the course remained. Around the same time, culturology appeared as an obligatory and fashionable subject at that Faith and culture - mother and daughter? - You teach culturology at MGIMO. Why did you take it? - It all started with a special course. I was then a fourth-year student and ... eager to teach. And Yuri Pavlovich Vyazemsky, head. Department of World Literature and Culture and my dear teacher, agreed. I prepared my author's special course and went to consult with my good friend, a brilliant philosopher, professor Vladimir Kirillovich Shokhin. He looked at my notes and said: You know, students really like biographies. Choose a few - and time. So there was no particular choice. Yuri Pavlovich said: let's teach. - Does cultural science exist as a scientific subject? I have not seen a single good textbook on cultural studies. The famous philosopher Alexander Pyatigorsky taunted political science at lectures. He said that even sexology is a science, but political science is not. Culturology is not one of the same fictitious sciences? - Yes, at one time there was debate about this. But my current course of authors, it is rather - in terms of the wonderful and recently departed from us Vadim Mikhailovich Mezhuyev - is a philosophy of culture. - Do you have your own culture philosophy? - Rather, this is my interpretation of the theory of culture of Vyazemsky. In the classroom, we talk with students about three ways of knowing the world - scientific, religious, artistic - we understand how they differ and how they create a holistic picture of the world for a person. Which is invariable: religion, science, art - always cause interest. Even in the form of disagreement. - Science, art and religion in your classes do not conflict with each other? - One of the most interesting tasks for me is to show that no. I explain to students that the tenacious idea of ​​their conflict is just a stereotype. Sometimes based on funny and helpless things. In our country, many anti-religious passages are self-revealing, like the Divine Comedy at the Obraztsov Theater. The God who sculpts a man on the stage is a caricature not so much of Christianity as of one who understands him that way. Well, what conflict does Galileo Galileo have with the Church? Galileo understood that the Bible was not given to us in order to tell how the sky was arranged, but in order to ascend to it. But Pope Urban VIII for some reason believed that it was one and the same. Apparently, Galileo was smarter than Urban VIII. In this matter, at least. Why Galileo turned out to be smarter than the Pope “I’m always curious that you, being a church speaker, easily recognize that Galileo was smarter than Urban VIII.” And people of culture can be stronger, smarter, or rather, than people of religion. But this is a rare position. In our Church, snobbery towards culture is more common. The brilliantly educated brothers-monks Zinkovsky quoted me recently transferred to St. Makari Optinsky review of St. Ignatius Brianchaninova on “Gogol's Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends”: it is important not to wipe the glass, but to light the light. “Selected places ...” - Nabokov, Belinsky, and St. Ignatius is more like “rubbing glass.” But in general, is culture not the birth of light? Why is it so often, even from Mother Superior, Doctor of Science, that one can hear that science is vanity? This contempt - why write novels? to do scientific experiments? - Berdyaev in the "Russian Idea" called obscurantism characteristic of our Church in the 19th century. - A man consists of spirit, soul and body, and art, of course, is the area of ​​the soul. And therefore, yes, it’s stupid to start reading “Philosophy of Love”, and then by all means stop reading Dostoevsky. So you stop nourishing the soul, nourishing only the spirit. Some people in the Church do have a similar neglect of the soul. Many regard as austerity about. Seraphim Rose, but few people know that he, for example, was very fond of Bach's music. And he thought that before he got deified, he had to humanize himself. The philosopher Sergei Askoldov has an interesting answer to the question why Russian Orthodoxy is not so focused on social service, as, for example, Western Christianity. In his opinion, because of the three principles in man — beast, human, and angelic — we tend to slip through the “human”. This is a very interesting and largely correct observation. Our culture, like any other, arose in the religious sphere, but often remains in it. All our philosophy and high humanitarian thought are religious. All Russian literature arose under the influence of Orthodoxy. - This is some key topic for us - the completion of the "human". - I think that now we are simply doomed to complete the human. And the Church should proceed from the fact that in the 21st century we can no longer jump over this stage. I think that focusing on the spiritual, with contempt for culture, is still a consequence of neophytism. Someone (like I once) in a neophyte impulse seriously wondered if he could stand on a stone for a thousand nights, like Seraphim of Sarov, someone threw Dostoevsky to read for the books of the holy fathers. But those who quit reading Dostoevsky usually soon return to him. Building the "human" is very important. But there is one “but.” You must understand that not everyone can become a scientist or writer. And saints - everyone. Because there is no person incapable of religion, of faith. By the way, I cannot but mention here the last film of A.S. Konchalovsky's “Sin,” in which Michelangelo concludes that he went all his life to God, and came only to man: he is admired for his masterpieces, but they cannot be prayed for. Very deep thought of the director. I once had a polemic with a church journalist who wrote in a review of Dan Brown's book “The Da Vinci Code” that the book is stupid, those who are passionate about it are fools, and the Church is not fools. I replied that in principle I could not agree with the author: it’s the university that doesn’t need fools, but everyone in the church needs it. There is no intellectual qualification. The Christian's goal is salvation, but it is not accomplished by cultural means. The academician is no closer to salvation than Aunt Masha with three classes of education. “Yes, everyone is needed in the temple, and fools, too.” But it would be good if they did not get the upper hand. - Of course. No wonder the Patriarch, the hierarchy insist on compulsory higher theological education of the priest. Recently I spoke with the Metropolitan, who is simply happy that there is this condition. Farewell to secularization. Religion is back - But just as the Church dismisses culture, people of culture even more energetically dismiss the Church. - Chesterton has a wonderful idea that faith and religion cannot be dismissed, because it includes everything in the world. Faith cannot and should not be in the gap, hostility or clash with culture. Religion is both the mother and the living heart of any culture. A culture with religion, like a child with parents, then leaves, then returns, then denies, then honors, then it becomes a parent. “But the emancipation did happen.” - Yes, as a student of Yuri Vyazemsky, I believe that science, art and religion today are three independent ways of knowing the world. Science knows the environment. Art is self-knowledge in art form. And religion, as Aleksei Fedorovich Losev believed, is the self-realization of personality in eternity. Not in everyday life, family, profession, but in eternity. But religion - this is a generally accepted place in modern humanities - is the main culture-forming phenomenon. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about the Orthodox culture of the Slavs, about the Confucian or Taoist culture of the Chinese, about the Protestant culture of the Germans or Americans. - But there was also a secularization of culture. - Still, European and American. Well, what kind of separation of religious from cultural or political can be talked about in a number of Islamic countries ?! And today, when religion is at the center of world political processes, international relations, we seem to be witnessing its movement from the periphery to the center of social and political life. This movement is rather the opposite of secularization. Recently, by the way, they talked about this at the Valdai Forum in a session with Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov. There is a serious, non-facade and cosmetic (as in Soviet times in the theme of "struggle for world peace") return of the Church to the life of modern society. It is clear that the temple today will not, as in medieval society, become the architectural dominant of every city. In general, this path is not strewn with roses. This difficult return is not always, by the way, positively affecting life, politics and religion itself. An increase in tension and quasi-religious extremism is associated with it. And the genocide of Christians. The persecution of Christians, by the way, is precisely because they are Christians. Well, Ukraine is an example of what happens when politics grossly intervenes in the sphere of religious life. Barbarians are a greater challenge to the Church than wiseacres - Sometimes it seems that people of culture today are the main duelists with religious people. Because barbarians or mockers like Nevzorov are not a challenge. A wise guy who does not agree to believe is a challenge. You are conducting deep conversations on TV with Artemy Lebedev, Vladimir Pozner ... - No, people of culture still know history well and understand what Christianity is. They usually raise questions about the specific steps of the Church, but being an anti-Christian is still strange for them. So what’s the challenge of them? They can tell us: “there were people in our time, the heroes are not you,” but show us the modern Theophan the Recluse or Filaret of Moscow. But here we have something to answer. We have a Patriarch with an incredible (according to Yevgeny Vodolazkin) gift of speech and the best modern rhetoric. https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/52666.html&xid=17259,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265,15700271,15700283&usg=ALkJrhhMVwM1Z1mEhl1oaTYawbFAKWX-zAhttps://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/60784.html&xid=17259,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265,15700271,15700283&usg=ALkJrhhvA_NR7Kze1FTE3xYP0dvtqidWFAThere is Metropolitan Hilarion , who writes wonderful music, the most talented Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) and many others ... No, we can speak the same language with people of culture, even those who are hard-minded. But the “barbarians”, in my opinion, are a greater challenge for the Church. The same neopaganism. Even without being an expert on it, I can easily prove that it is a pseudo-stylization. Does this excite the guys who go to the “rocking chair”? The father of one such guy says to me: as if the toggle switch was switched, after the new year, many came with axes instead of body crosses. They have a sectarian consciousness, and our arguments are not interesting to them. And we, according to the Apostle Paul, forever, forever, exhaustively saying: “For all I have become everything”, we need to become someone for these guys “with axes”. Therefore, in our Church, a sport commission arose, etc. I am not always satisfied with the quality and quantity of dialogs with people of science and art, but I understand that here we have something to say. And what can neopagans say? “But here are just great masters - simple priests who are incapable of dialogue with people of culture.” And with these guys - they are sages, and they have their own life hacks. And how, by the way, are sheep and shepherds found? It is clear that the task of catching in the network should not be ... “Why not?” The task of catching on the network, understood, of course, exclusively in the gospel sense, is before us. I come to the students and try my best to teach their profession. I brake more than 130 people (thanks to the technique) through the Telegram Channel, throw off links to them, discuss, advise you to watch something, read the same Losev. I’m sending a long video marked “only for smart people, please do not worry the rest”. I "catch" them in the network of science and profession. And I study with them, answering their questions and objections. And where the Church is trying to catch is much more important. - What is the name of the flock to the Church, including the cultural, sophisticated? Why - to the contact of thoughts, feelings and experience? Or a call is not needed and they will come? - This may be the most important issue today. I recently spoke with my colleagues on the Vera radio, and one interlocutor, in my opinion, rightly noticed that the early Christians had a challenge to paganism, and they answered it. In Soviet times, there was a powerful challenge to atheism, and it was also answered. And now, in her opinion, there is a cotton wall around, a jelly of opinions, and the feeling is that the Church has nothing to say. I am convinced that the Church has something to say. And we have to talk. But the times are, indeed, such that Voltaire’s phrase about respecting the opinion that you hate (which they say he never uttered) you will involuntarily begin to appreciate. Because if a person hates someone’s point of view, then the world for him is divided into right and wrong things. And in the jelly of modern ideas, there are not even right and wrong points of view. What to do in a situation where a person says everything: a, well, good. Are you Christian? Good. Satanist? Perfectly. Isn't this the modern world? When we discussed the history of the temple in Yekaterinburg with the students, one girl wrote to me what religion they would vote for in Russia, let it be. For her it’s in the same row as - I drink energy, you are Coca-Cola, and he is “Bon Aqua”. What is the difference whether faith is true or not, once it is chosen. - Probably, as there is barbarism of neopagans, so there is barbarism of students. “But this is some new barbarism.” I do not yet fully understand what to do with it. - Continue work, engage in dialogue. - Listen, our European brothers are working out, and the results? Temples are selling. - Huge Catholic cathedrals are expensive to maintain. They are rented out under pressure (disgracefully harsh under capitalism) financial circumstances. But the royal families do not leave the temple, and services are given in the cathedrals given for exhibitions. - I agree that many of our ideas about a spiritless Europe are primitive. But I can’t see the trends of indifference. Personal experience “Why did they burn Gordano Bruno?” - To understand the real relationship between science and religion, we must remember that modern science arose largely thanks to Christianity. It is clear that its appearance was not the goal of the Christian religion, but it was the Christian demythologization of the cosmos, the theological and philosophical thesis that the world does not have a divine nature, but is a creation, created the worldview conditions for modern scientific research. The image of a scientist in the form of Bazarov, cutting frogs, was impossible in the ancient pagan world. You can not explore (especially with a scalpel) that which is sacred. Because some demon frog will give you in your ear. You and I briefly discussed the history of Galileo Galilei, which does not contain any essentially religious or scientific struggle. Well, what is the conflict of faith and science in it? A remarkable mind is a man whose position on the demarcation of religion and science as ways of understanding the world, the Catholics for some reason perceived as a challenge. I have to spend all my time with students on educational stories with “martyrs from science”. We analyze why Giordano Bruno was not a scientist - even by the standards of his time, and Galileo, who knew his works, never quoted them until we realized that he was burned for ancient magic teachings, and not for science. This does not justify those who burned him, but burned him for heresy. And before that, the Inquisition was kept in the casemates for 8 years, according to some researchers, in the hope of convincing. I really like to ask a student at the standings or exam: why did they burn Galileo (and today they often say that)? One boy recently answered without hesitation: nevertheless, they did not burn him. So, there is the result of our meetings.