The teachings of Alexei Chernyakov about the soul and mind: reflections and comments

Abstract

Chernyakov in his famous monograph reveals the concept of the soul through the opposite — the concept of the mind. But the point is not only in the explication of the concept through the opposite meaning. Following the logic of Chernyakov, the soul and mind at a certain stage fall into a kind of dynamic unity as the highest participation in the divine gaze. Being, according to Aristotle, a common feeling, the soul is through continuous “flipping” of private feelings, and so that in the formula: “I feel and understand what I feel,” the second term is exfoliated, i.e. the terminological limitation has been removed. As a result, the pure movement “feel the feeling of feeling” is released as a continuity of sensual evidence. The soul lives in the gaps of the mind and sees its infinity in them. Chernyakov draws attention to the fact that any distinction is simultaneously and latently the moment of binding distinctions. But the moments of discrimination / binding in soul and mind are given in different ways. Awakening (discriminating), the soul simultaneously connects the different so as to survey the all-encompassing expanse of itself and all that exists in the unity of self-movement. The soul, like the mind, is a form without matter, but in a different way from the mind. The soul also moves towards the object, but does not deviate from it to meet with itself, as the mind does, but passes through the object at the moment when it is already (still) decomposed or is in a de-objectified form. An object, being the energy of the mind, is "weathered" in relation to the soul, leaving a kind of living sensory imprint, the soul revives when it connects sensory imprints of objects, meeting itself in them. Chernyakov, referring to Aristotle, believes that the general feeling really contains in some way all the objects of the senses (but without matter). We explain to ourselves that these objects are in a de-objectified form. Unimpeded by overcoming (opening) the gap of the mind, the soul “sees” (binds) a multitude of sensory forms, in each of which a free gaze as such is released. This is not a gaze fixed on something unchanging. And it is also not a perception, which, as part of a speculative form, adds a new “perceive something” to “I perceive something”. Now the act: “I perceive something” is opened and partially discarded, leaving only an independent, continuous dynamic attachment in the remainder: “perceives” + “perceives” + “perceives”, etc.