Florensky and the Nature of Russian Religious Philosophy

My application for a Lise Meitner Fellowship is meant to make it possible for me to join the research project on "Religion and Secularism" at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM). The project is directed by Prof. Charles Taylor, one of the foremost philosophers of our time. I believe that I could make a contribution to the work being done at the IWM by drawing attention to a little known model of the relationship between religion and secularism, which was worked out by Russian religious philosophy, especially as exemplified in the writings of one of its main representatives, Pavel Florensky (1882-1937). I will argue that what lies at the heart of Russian religious thought is the conscious attempt to overcome the religious- secular divide in Western culture. In this way, the Russian model is different in kind from the reigning, Western paradigm. No attempt has been made so far, to my knowledge, to study the Russian material in the context of contemporary debates on religious and secular reason. At the same time, although specific to Russian culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Russian model may contain aspects which could be useful when dealing with contemporary, non-Western societies. Ultimately, the current research proposal could contribute to re-thinking some of the most common assumptions about the nature of modernity, which may have implications for the way in which we identify and address problems of our present-day modernity. My work at the IWM would evolve in three, interrelated, stages: 1. The first eight months, roughly speaking, would be devoted to working on the Russian material - writings by and on Florensky, as well as the basic corpus of Russian religious philosophy. 2. The second eight months would be spent on familiarizing myself with some of the most important work in recent years on religion and secularism. 3. During the last eight months I would endeavour to bring the research from the first and second stage together in a book. By the end of this period, I should be ready to submit the first draft of my book.