V.V. Rozanov: Paganism and myth in the context of national and religious identity
The article deals with the topical problem of national-religious identity raised in the philosophy of V.V. Rozanov. Rozanov deconstructs the Uvarov’s formula "Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality", subjecting its first element to critical analysis. The dogmatization of Orthodoxy does not take into account the socio-historical context, thereby entire groups of people remain outside the church teaching. For identity, it is necessary to find common ground for all interested groups. Such points are, firstly, social relations that coincide with the cultural forms of individuals’ being (gender-based, marital, ritual), and, secondly, a special "pagan" attitude to history as a generic succession, and the "world" as a dialectical system of ideal-material unity. In this regard, Orthodoxy should absorb pagan elements (a thought congenial to the epoch), to move from the figure of Christ crucified on the cross to the figure of the infant Christ, that is, in Rozanov's terminology, from "people of moonlight" to "people of the sun." Only with a "serious" attitude to the "world" and the history flowing in it, the unity of any nation is possible. Therefore, the "secularization" of the church is a necessary historical process, and the apology of paganism is not a return to the past and polytheism, but the basis for the modernization and remythologization of church teaching. It is through myth that the pagan fulfills its integrative function, and from this point of view Rozanov's thesis "give the temple to the world" is considered by the researcher in the context of the modern search for a nationwide idea, which, being divorced from direct religiosity, is nevertheless able to preserve its basic "social" patterns. At the end of the article, the author comes to the conclusion that Rozanov's teaching about identity in the context of the pagan-mythical "approach" to reality is relevant at the present time and as Bart's "ideologisms", the pagan resource seems to be potentially inexhaustible.
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