Russian Religious Geosophy: An Attempt of Philosophical and Historical Reconstruction

Abstract

In the article, an attempt is undertaken to apply the concept of geophilosophy of G. Deleuze and F. Guattari to the main range of problems of Russian religious philosophy. Under such an approach, world development projects are put into the foreground, in particular, Vl. Solovyov’s project of universal theocracy. The authors begin with the representation that such world-organizing projects are an obligatory component of a nascent philosophical discourse. Several key themes of Russian thought, that is, such “Russian ideas” as the opposition between Russia and Europe, or the historical mission of Russia, are considered not only from the point of view of the validity or untruthfulness of their content, but as a specific intellectual experience of the reclamation of world areas by the means of philosophical thought, and the experience of geosophy. As opposition to the West failed, the sacral dimension of the expanse of Russia’s geography appears not only as a sacred geographical region or as a mystical, corporeal sphere (V. V. Rozanov), but also as an “icy desert” (K. P. Pobedonostsev), or as a tectonic break opening doors to another world (Vl. Solovyov and Sophiology). The world-development projects of Russian philosophy naturally find a universal scale, a possibility owing to specific “non-dualistic” uses of the category of the world. The experience of Russian geosophy, both positive and negative, remains a reality and deserves serious consideration.