С.Л. Франк в Петербургском религиозно-философском обществе

Abstract

The subject of this article is S.L. Frank's participation in the creation and work of the Saint Petersburg Religious and philosophical society and the evolution of his worldview in the confrontation between the cognitive-objectivist rationalist system of consciousness of S.L. Frank and the romantic subjectivism of the «new religious consciousness», represented by D.S. Merezhkovsky, D.V. Filosofov and other ideologists of «neo-Christianity». The source of the opposition is called a different understanding of the absolute and its regulatory role in relation to reality, which was expressed – on the one hand-in the religious individualism of S.L. Frank and on the other hand-in the «religious community» of the ideologists of the «new religious consciousness». The article States that S.L. Frank's reflection on solving these problems in the Religious and philosophical society took place in the atmosphere of theoretical disputes caused by three events in the philosophical and religious and social life of Russia in 1910: discussion of the ideas of pragmatism, polemics about the specifics of philosophy in connection with the appearance of the Russian edition of Logos and the death of Leo Tolstoy. It is emphasized that the participation of S.L. Frank's understanding of these events was reflected in the movement of his thought from idealism to ontology of the «first philosophy», the expression of which was the work «the Subject of knowledge». It is noted that the «frame work» of this movement of S.L. Frank was set by the development of the scientific and philosophical and poetic heritage of I.V. Goethe. The article shows how the ideological evolution of S.L. Frank is fixed in his personal religious life. In conclusion, the author joins the assessment of the role of S.L. Frank in the religious and social movement in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, given by N.A. Berdyaev: S.L. Frank brings «clarity, freedom and quiet harmony» to it.