The article focuses on the philosophical and scientific dialogue between Vladimir Vernadsky and Pavel Florensky in the context of Russian philosophy. Florensky formulated his philosophy in the book The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, making a great impact on Vernadsky. The two philosophers exchanged their thoughts through letters. During the time of his imprisonment, Florensky wrote letters on scientific topics to his son Kirill, who worked with Vernadsky. Thus, Kirill Florensky became the point of contact between the two thinkers. The present article aims to show the complementarity between Vernadsky’s and Florensky’s work with a particular emphasis on their conception of noosphere-pneumatosphere connected with Plato’s methaphysics, which Florensky interpreted as the world of the Truth or absolute reality. Through investigating Vernadsky’s and Florensky’s letters and diaries and comparing their conceptions of noosphere and pneumatosphere, as well as their interpretation of reality in their writings, it is possible to determine influences of the concepts important for Russian religious philosophers, such as a tendency towards wholeness and intuition. The first part of the article examines Vernadsky in relation to Russian idealists, the second part of the article is focused on the relationship between Vernadsky and Florensky, and the third on the concepts of noosphere, pneumatosphere, and the concept of reality (living being) — absolute reality (Truth). Through these three steps, the complementarity of Vernadsky’s and Florensky’s interpretations are illustrated. Their interpretations are not contradictory because while Vernadsky dealt with Earth’s reality and its evolution, and Florensky focused on the metaphysical world, both were interested in the evolution of the biosphere-noosphere/pneumatosphere through the activity of man. The article is the first study in English focused on the scientific and religious-philosophical interaction between Vernadsky and Florensky.
The article serves as the introduction into the publication of the “Historical Letter” by V.I. Lamansky. The authors consider the context of V.I. Lamansky’s discourse concerning the reciprocal relations between the Slavs and the Germans. Considering these relations as inimical, V.I. Lamansky substantiated this idea by references to the opinion of German scholars about the Slavs. He showed the malignancy of the German cultural and political influence on the Slavs, something which leads to the loss of their nationality, based on the example of Czech and, to some extent, Croatian history. It is not a coincidence that the essential part of the second “Historical Letter” is based on the material of the Hussite movement and Thirty Years’ War which caused the germanisation of the Czech people. Lamansky attached great importance to the Hussite movement, as he considered it one of the highest manifestations of the Slavic self-consciousness (or at least of the Western Slavs). Based on the letters of the scholar showing his attitude to the Czech people, F. Palacky and other leaders of the Czech Revival, the authors demonstrate that Lamansky had probably borrowed the notion of “the Greek-Slavic world” as against the German-Roman world from German historiological literature. Being an adherent of Slavophilism, Lamansky considerably contributed to it. Particularly, he tried to more definitely formulate Slavophile’s attitude to the “Slavic question,” on which the attention of the founders of the movement had paid little attention. His interpretation of Slavic history was best realized in his master’s thesis “On the Slavs in Middle Asia, Africa and Spain” (1859). The second “Historical Question” was likely written soon after finishing work on the thesis and was a step on the way to his other serious work, namely his doctoral thesis “On Historical Studies of the Greek-Slavic World in Europe” (1871), as both “Historical Letters” and the dissertation were written from similar historiographical positions.
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