Other relevant keywords: Existentialism, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology
Sergey Horujy (1941-2020)
Sergey Sergeevich Horujy was a Soviet and Russian theoretical physicist and mathematician, researcher of the Eastern Christian ascetic tradition of Hesychasm and of Russian philosophy, translator and commentator of James Joyce’s work, and one of the most prominent Russian philosophers of the contemporary period. He is the author of 11 monographs and more than 300 academic papers, most of which address the potential uses of Hesychast ascetic practices for modern anthropology and the tradition of Russian philosophy. Employing the approaches of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism, Horujy created an original, non-classical anthropological theory which he called “synergic anthropology,” and which he argued could function as a new episteme for the humanities and thereby overcome the anthropological crisis of the present era. Horujy understands synergic anthropology not as a refined concept, but as a “complex of ideas” that derive from the Orthodox theology of energy and are rooted in the ascetic tradition of Hesychasm (Leonkiewicz 368). In addition, he draws inspiration from the intuitions present in existentialism, personalism, the philosophy of dialogue, but above all—in hermeneutics and phenomenology. Nevertheless, Horujy cannot be included in any of the above trends, because his philosophical theory of synergic anthropology is separate from these fields, combines various directions of philosophy, and is his own original creation.
Horujy was born in Skopin (Ryazan region) in 1941. He graduated from the Department of Physics, Quantum Theory, and Statistical Physics at the Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1964 and earned his Ph.D. from the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in 1967 (thesis: Issues of the Axiomatic Scattering Theory), where he began working immediately after graduation and remained until 2006. He received his D.Sc. in Physical and Mathematical Sciences in 1976 (thesis: Algebraic Quantum Field Theory with Superselection Rules). As a physicist and mathematician, Horujy is the author of several dozen scholarly articles and two monographs. He was the first to systematically expound the algebraic axiomatics of relativistic quantum theory.
Horujy was self-taught in the fields of philosophy and theology. Belonging to the generation of the Moscow intellectual elites of the 1960s, Horujy began to develop an interest in Orthodox spirituality and, later, in the religious intuitions of the Russian religious philosophical tradition. During his student years, he participated in the philosophical circle of prominent Soviet Marxist philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, where he discovered the philosophy of the Silver Age and, later, would himself contribute to its popularization in Russia and abroad. In 1968 Horujy was baptized by Orthodox priest and theologian Alexander Men. His first monograph, written in 1974 and titled Florensky’s Worldview (Mirosozertsanie Florenskogo), was devoted to the thought of Pavel Florensky. It was in his second monograph, Diptych of Silence. The Aesthetic Study of the Human Being in Light of Theology and Philosophy (Diptikh bezmolviya. Asketicheskoe uchenie o cheloveke v bogoslovskom i filosofskom osveshchenii), written in 1978, that he included the first outline of his system of synergic anthropology, which at that point he referred to as the “synergic analytic.” For several decades Horujy shared a close friendship with Vladimir Bibikhin, the translator of Heidegger’s works into Russian, an expert in Ancient philosophy, and Alexei Losev’s personal secretary. This friendship was very important for establishing Horujy’s reputation as a philosopher. Inspired by Bibikhin, Horujy began to discuss his early outlines for his new method of synergic anthropology. Hereby, the figure of Bibikhin became a link between the philosophy of the Silver Age, Orthodox energeticism, the respective thought of Losev and Heidegger, and synergic anthropology. Horujy’s work on synergic anthropology combines the Soviet intellectual tradition (including his training in quantum physics) with the traditions of Russian philosophy and spirituality in exile.
After turning his scholarly attention to developing and promoting his method of synergic anthropology, Horujy held academic positions at the Russian Academic of Natural Sciences and the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as served as a member of the Biblical and Theological Commission at Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church (from which he then resigned in 2016). In 1993 he founded the Laboratory of Synergic Anthropology within the structure of the Institute of Man at the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and in 2005 the Institute of Synergic Anthropology, where until 2017 he hosted regular guest seminars by philosophers, psychologists, theologians, translators, poets, and theatre directors, with the primary goal of advancing his method of synergic anthropology. Also, in 2006, Horujy established the Center for Synergic Anthropology, a joint project with the Institute of Education at the National Research University—Higher School of Economics, with the objective of further developing the applications of synergic anthropology in a wide range of human activity, including “virtual anthropology, anthropology of art, extreme and psychedelic practices, and practices of transgression and terrorism” (ISA/about-us).
Horujy was also a renowned translator of James Joyce’s works in Russia, and together with Victor Hinkis he completed a full translation of Ulysses into Russian in 1993. Later he translated Epiphanies, Stephen Hero, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Dubliners, as well as authored a piece on Ulysses. Alongside English, Horujy spoke Italian, German, and French. His works have been translated into English, Polish, German, French, Chinese, and Serbian.
Russian Philosophy of the Silver Age
Horujy played a significant role in popularizing the Russian philosophy of the Silver Age and its key figure, Vladimir Solovyov. As part of his editorial activity, he was involved in publishing works by leading representatives of Silver Age thought, including by Pavel Florensky, Sergei Bulgakov, and Lev Karsavin. However, while these thinkers were among his research interests and he published scholarly articles and a separate monograph on them, they do not play a noticeable role in the methodological foundation of his own synergic anthropology. According to Horujy, the thought of the Silver Age arose primarily from the European idealistic tradition, based on classical metaphysical concepts of subject, substance, and essence. As such, he argues, it cannot serve as the basis for a new anthropological thought that might explain the present condition and situation of the human being in the world. And more specifically, he argues that it is unable to express the spirit of Russian thought, which is itself rooted in the Orthodox tradition. Horujy finds the concept of “Sofia,” which is a key idea in the philosophy of the Silver Age, to be “an archaic direction of philosophy,” a concept that has not been “well-developed philosophically” and remains “too dependent on theological concepts and myths” (Leonkiewicz 378). Moreover, he is quite critical of Onomatodoxy (imiaslavie), a religious movement that identifies God’s name with God Himself, and a trend in Orthodoxy that had a great influence on the philosophers of the Silver Age.
Neopatristic Synthesis
Horujy describes synergic anthropology as a method for the analysis of anthropological experience, rooted primarily in the concept of the “human being” within the Orthodox ascetic tradition. Horujy considers ascetic experience to be “a pure anthropological experience,” one that is “epistemologically transparent and anthropologically representative” (Synergic Anthropology 4-5). This experience can then serve as the basis for “a new analytical or phenomenological description of the whole field of anthropological experience, which amounts to new pluralistic and experiential anthropology” (4). Here Horujy’s methodological strategy is similar to that of Husserl, who considered the cognitive experience cogito ergo sum as the “smallest rescued bit” that could then serve as the basis for a new philosophy (The Project of Synergic Anthropology 2; Synergic Anthropology 7).
Horujy is inspired by a trend in Orthodox theology called “neopatristic synthesis,” developed by Fr. Georgy Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, and Fr. John Meynendorff. These theologians sought to “return to the Fathers,” believing that this would purify Orthodox theology from the influences of Western scholasticism and secular philosophy. In the spirit of authors such as Maxim the Confessor, John of Damascus, and Gregory Palamas, who rejected Christian Neoplatonism, the representatives of neopatristic synthesis attempted to establish a dialogue with contemporary philosophical though, while remaining within the framework of Christian dogmatics. Moreover, they emphasized the understanding of the Church as Eucharistic community, the apophatic dimensions of theology, the connection of theology to spiritual practice, and the importance of theological concepts like deification and synergy. Accordingly, neopatristic synthesis revived interest in the ascetic tradition of Hesychasm—a mystical practice of Eastern Orthodoxy that arose, quite controversially, in the 14th century around the figure of Greek theologian Gregory Palamas, and which involved a focus on contemplative prayer and a turn inwards to find God.
Horujy sees himself as a direct continuator of neopatristic synthesis, while at the same time striving to renew the anthropological problem within the framework of philosophical discourse, using the tools of existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. He completely disregards the Soviet tradition of philosophy, with the exception of Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vygotsky, and instead assumes that the next stage in the development of Russian thought beyond the Silver Age is neopatristic synthesis. By adopting the anthropological assumptions of this trend, Horujy argues that we perceive the human being as a “community of energies.” According to Horujy’s interpretation, neopatristic synthesis is a form of a “Living Tradition”—a unity of patristic theology and Hesychast practice. He then seeks to reveal the philosophical potential of neopatristic synthesis and its hermeneutical and phenomenological aspects, arguing that “the concept possessed vast conceptual, epistemological, and methodological resources capable of stimulating the creation of a new philosophic formation that would be distinct from the modernist thinking of the Silver Age” (The Concept of Neopatristic Synthesis 17). Horujy not only explores the possibilities of neopatristic synthesis for anthropology, but applies this concept to other concerns, such as post-secularism, ecological crisis, philosophical approaches to technology, the philosophy of Self, and psychology. In his work, synergic anthropology functions as the link between the Orthodox tradition and modernity. It also allows him to reinterpret the relationship between theology and philosophy and between faith and reason, including highlighting the ways that the Orthodox understanding of theology differs significantly from that of Protestantism and then using these differences as a starting point for a new approach to understanding the human being.
Asceticism as a Basis for a New Anthropology
Horujy is the author of several monographs in which he performs a theoretical reconstruction of the aesthetic practice of Hesychasm, including Diptych of Silence and the two-volume Research on the Hesychast Tradition (Issledovaniya po isikhastskoy traditsii). Moreover, the direct anthropological experience in Hesychasm becomes the basis of a new philosophical discourse and a kind of reference point for a critical retrospective of European anthropology or reflection on the current anthropological situation. The term Hesychasm comes from the Greek hesychia (ἡσυχία), meaning “stillness” and “quiet.” In the ascetic anthropology of Hesychasm, man is seen not as a subject, substance, or essence, but rather as a unity of certain “anthropological manifestations.” Horujy employs this as the basis for his new anthropology—in particular, Gregory Palamas’ idea of the energy derived from his theological synthesis. The tradition of Hesychasm develops a strict schema of human energies, including energies of the mind, energies of the body, and psychological energies. As Horujy believes, “hesychast studies may provide a fresh look at some old interconfessional divisions, disclosing unexpected points of resemblance” (Christian Anthropology). As part of his interest in Hesychasm, Horujy prepared an extensive bibliography on this topic, including over 10,000 bibliographic items in 20 ancient and modern languages, and fifteenth-century texts from Egypt, Syria, the Byzantine Empire, Greece, Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, and Georgia, published in 2004.
It is important to emphasize that synergic anthropology is not a theological approach, but a philosophical one. It translates Palamas’ doctrine of the divine energies into philosophical language, appealing to the theological concept of synergy as a harmonic collaboration of divine (uncreated) and human (created) energies. By reconstructing the anthropology contained in the Christian ascetic tradition, Horujy shows how man there is understood as a “synergy” of created, natural energies and uncreated, divine energies. According to Hesychasm, the overarching goal of human existence is to achieve the state of deification, which Horujy interprets as an “ontological transformation” that leads to crossing the “anthropological border.”
Synergic Anthropology
We can distinguish several main impulses within Horujy’s system of synergic anthropology. First is Horujy’s own spiritual research and his aspiration to express the mystical experience described in the Hesychast tradition through the systematic language of philosophy. Second is his search for a new language that can fully explain the phenomenon of the contemporary anthropological crisis, which manifests itself as sudden human changes, the result of which are unpredictable. From a theoretical point of view, the anthropological crisis is manifested as a lack of proper anthropological doctrines: i.e., the idea that existing theories and/or concepts such as the subject, substance, or essence are insufficient for describing the present situation of the human being in the world. The discourse of synergic anthropology, thus, lacks all three of the above-mentioned concepts. In their place, Horujy uses concepts derived from practical anthropology contained in spiritual traditions, giving them a systematic, philosophical shape.
Finally, Horujy’s work seeks “to establish a constructive dialogue between religious and secular thought, and to widen the horizon of Orthodox discourse to the self that is often too narrowly defined in ecclesial and Eucharistic terms” (Schneider 2). And yet, synergic anthropology is not “religious anthropology” in the traditional sense. Instead, Horujy positions synergic anthropology as a basis for new subjectivities, a “trans-disciplinary” discourse that begins a “kind of anthropological expansion into other disciplines and discourses in the sphere of the humanities,” striving to make synergic anthropology the “science of human science,” and a new “episteme for all the sphere of the humanities” (The Project of Synergic Anthropology 11; Synergic Anthropology, its Contexts and its Connection with Michel Foucault 3; Synergia as a Universal Paradigm 2). However, the main object of synergic anthropology differs from the traditional object of anthropology—it is primarily the “border manifestations of man” and the dynamics of their changes. Thus, Horujy’s work attempts to connect the religious and the secular, the ancient and the modern, the theological and the philosophical, and the Russian and the Western.
In synergic anthropology man is considered not from the perspective of his “essence,” but from the point of view of the ways of constituting his person. The emphasis is therefore shifted from the static quidditas (quo quid erat esse) to a dynamic system and variable order, from what is initially “given and determining” to what is “goal” achievable through the appropriate organization of the efforts of the person. Respectively, Horujy builds his anthropology not according to the “discourse of essence,” but in the “discourse of energy.” Here he understands the concept of “energy” in a “personalistic” way, as opposed to Aristotelean energy as an “essential” category (О starom i novom 318-20). In Horujy’s view, the idea of non-Aristotelian, “nonessential” energy is free of the rigid determinism and teleologism of the Aristotelian world. Moreover, the move from the usual essential categories to Horujy’s “discourse of energy” allows us to avoid reducing our understanding of the human subject as “what is currently given,” and instead allows us to focus on the “topos of man’s self-determination” by transcending the self in the act of moving towards the ontological Other (О starom i novom 15-16).
An important concept within synergic anthropology is the idea of “boundary,” or “border.” Human beings are constituted and defined by the “boundary”—man is drawn to it, examines it, attempts to cross it and looks beyond it. The idea of “boundary” defines an existential situation in which human energies meet the energies of “another order”; Horujy refers to such situations as “border situations,” which shape the “boundary” of anthropological experience. By adopting this perspective, synergic anthropology is best described as an “anthropology of the Border,” rather than an “anthropology of the Center” (Man’s Three far-away Kingdoms 54-55). As Horujy emphasizes, “the anthropological reality (first of all, the constitution of man, the structure of his person and identity) is described in synergic anthropology on the basis of the borderline anthropological experience. It is structured according to the three topoi of the anthropological border—ontological, ontical, and virtual” (Fonar’ Diogena 709). The ontological topos is where “the self-realization of man takes place in an ontological perspective, that is—with the maximum fullness, in the broadest spectrum of self-creation,” until such natural conditions as finality or mortality are surpassed (Fonar’ Diogena 709). The two remaining topoi, the ontic and virtual, shape the “anthropological openings” of a fundamentally different type—“opening towards the unconscious,” understood as ontically different and “opening towards the virtual,” as opposed to the actual reality (Ocherki sinergiynoy antropologii 75-76).
Synergic anthropology understands communication in ontological terms, as the perfect interaction of energies of two different natures. According to Horujy, “in Orthodoxy, attaining the state of Grace is understood as the actual reconciliation of human created energies and divine uncreated energy. Reconciliation, in turn, means the concordant action of both types of energy (…) corresponding to the Greek term συν-εργεία” (Issledovaniya po isikhastskoy traditsii 86). Within this cooperation, the two different natures of the cooperating parties are preserved and do not fuse into any kind of substantial unity, as synergy takes place “in the horizon of energy,” not “in the horizon of essence.” According to Horujy, the idea of synergy within Orthodox theology can be understood as the “energetic paradigm of ontological transcending realized by two types of energy with two different sources and being an actual transition to a different kind of being, unlike the forms of transcendence described in existential and other philosophies,” where the subject is considered only within the temporal horizon of life (Isikhazm kak prostranstvo filosofii 93).
Synergic anthropology, as an epistemological program, provides the instruments to identify and describe man as a specific being defined in a “non-essential,” “energetic” way. This allows us to look at human beings as free and capable of the creative realization of this freedom in the act of personal transcendence. In this respect, synergic anthropology comes forward as a radical version of anti-essentialism in anthropology, in order to seek out the elusive object of anthropological knowledge and to diagnose and forecast the global anthropological processes forming human identity today.
Applications of Synergic Anthropology
Within his work on synergic anthropology, Horujy discusses radical “anthropological trends” as post-humanism and trans-humanism, which, in his opinion, represent the “departure trend” or “euthanasia trend” of the human species. Moreover, he uses synergic anthropology to analyze other fields and practices, including developments in applied psychology, the phenomenon of suicide terrorism, or global anthropological transformations within the fields of nano-, bio-, and cognitive technology.
Horujy also outlines the anthropological dimension of the phenomenon of post-secularism and uses synergic anthropology to present the ecological problem and the problem of technology in a new, anthropological perspective. For this Horujy uses his own methods of “anthropological localization,” for contemoprary civilizational trends, and of “anthropological diagnostics,” for the global reality (Why Unlock Oneself? 4). In addition, he employs ideas from Heidegger (τέχνη vs das Gestell) and the concept of “Cosmic liturgy” present in Orthodox theology. In his view, it is possible to overcome the ecological crisis through an “ontological reassessment of modern technology and science,” thereby providing a new “ontological” ecology (The Patristic Idea of Cosmic Liturgy 95; Eastern-Christian Civilisation 8).
Another phenomena which Horujy explains from the perspective of synergic anthropology is the crisis of ethic in contemporary society, both in Russia and in the world as a whole. He shows the links between the modern ethical crisis and the “classical anthropological model” based on western metaphysics. He then analyzes the European and non-European alternatives to that model, including the non-classical anthropology of the ascetic practices of Eastern Christianity. He shows how that anthropology can generate a new ethics, which he describes as “non-classical and anti-Kantian,” “extra-normative,” “not universalist,” and “experiential” (Crisis of Classical European Ethics 5–6).
Horujy also sees synergic anthropology as a means to establish dialogue between different civilization projects, or spiritual traditions: e.g., he compares Hesychasm and Zen Buddhism in terms of their corresponding “anthropological experience,” the ontological shape of the ultimate goal of each of these traditions, and the corresponding images of the perfect human being in both. Another important field of application of synergic anthropology is the interpretation of the civilizational and cultural process in Russia, whereby Horujy traces the coexistence of spiritual and cultural traditions, as well as the evolution of Russian consciousness on these concepts. In addition, he outlines how to apply his ideas to social philosophy and the anthropology of literature.
Last but not least, synergic anthropology aspires to become a new episteme for the humanities as a whole, to serve as a methodological tool for “a new conceptualization of all basic discourses of the humanities,” and to become the universal paradigm that could create new methodological links between the domains of theology, anthropology, and synergetics (The Project of Synergic Anthropology 12). Synergic anthropology is currently being developed by a number of authors in Russia and abroad. Among them, Kristina Stoeckl (Austria) uses it as a tool for insight into contemporary political thought, including the concept of freedom in the philosophy of Alasdair McIntyre, John Rawls, and Isaiah Berlin (Stoeckl 2008). Vadim Pavlov (Belarus), in turn, takes inspiration from synergic anthropology in his work on a new “post-classical,” “non-normative,” “energic discourse of law” (Pavlov 2012).
Western European Philosophy and Synergic Anthropology
According to Horujy, “the notion of human as an integral, holistic whole has been lost in European metaphysics” (Leonkiewicz 368). At the same time, in Western anthropology there has been a “division of man into individual elements and his reduction to one of that elements” (Leonkiewicz 368). This gave rise to a protest revealed in the thought of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, whose philosophy Horujy describes as “an anthropology of opening,” and which he considers among the main inspirations for synergic anthropology. Also, Horujy includes phenomenology, structuralism and postmodernism to the trend of anthropological protest against the classical anthropological model. However, all these trends served, above all, as a rejection of the old metaphysics and the anthropology rooted in it. Today, according to Horujy, the time has come to create a new anthropology in the place of a deconstructed classical vision of the human being. Inspired by the terms “participative consciousness” and “experiencing activity” introduced by Bakhtin, Horujy seeks to make a kind of generalization—to extend phenomenology, creating a more universal anthropological concept on its basis.
In the early days of synergic anthropology, Horujy was heavily influenced by Heidegger’s thought, however its influence diminished over time. Primarily, Horujy was inspired by Heidegger’s understanding of authentic being as presence. Moreover, Horujy compares the gradual anthropological ascension process present in existential analytics to the ladder of spiritual ascension in Hesychasm. Through his analysis of the existential analytics, Horujy comes to the conclusion that it is a kind of inversion of spiritual practice. While the goal of the latter is divine Being, Heidegger sees such ascension as developing a special kind of attitude towards fear, death, and nothingness.
A more significant inspiration for synergic anthropology was the late thought of Michel Foucault, especially his concept of “Practices of the Self” (les pratiques de soi), where man “shape[s] the human constitution in relation to a certain ‘true self,’ who is the goal of the practice” (Orthodox Theology and Philosophy of Self 110). Horujy also devoted several late articles to René Girard, analyzing the anthropological content of Girard’s eschatological concepts and highlighting similarities with the assumptions of synergic anthropology.
Roman Turowski and Teresa Obolevitch, February 2021
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