Sobornost
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Sobornost is a Russian word for co-operation between multiple forces. It is frequently translated as "togetherness" or "integrality". It is also the term of Catholic in Russian it is based on the Russia word for church counsels sobor or synaxis. It is the Russian word for church properties, which is similar to the Greek word μετόχια (Metochion). The term was coined by the early Slavophiles, Ivan Kireevsky and Aleksey Khomyakov, to underline the need for cooperation between people at the expense of individualism on the basis that the opposing groups focus on what is common between them. Khomyakov believed this stemmed from the west embracing Aristotle and his defining individualism. Where as Kireevsky believe that Hegel and Aristotle represented the same ideal of reconciliation.
Khomyakov and Kireevsky originally used the term to designate cooperation within the Russian obshchina, united by a set of common convictions and Orthodox Christian values, as opposed to the cult of individualism in the West.
[edit] Philosophy
As a philosophical term it was used by Nikolai Lossky and other 20th-century Russian thinkers to refer to a middle way of cooperation between several opposing ideas. This is based on the influence that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Dialetic Triad philosophy of Thesis, antithesis, synthesis (though in Russian philosophy this would be considered an oversimplication of Hegel) had on Khomyakov and Kireevsky.
The synthesis being the point where sobornost is reached causing change. Hegel's formula being the basis for Historicism. Nikolai Lossky for example uses the term to explain what motive would be behind people working together for a common, historical or social goal, rather than pursuing the goal individualistically. Lossky used it almost as a mechanical term to define when the dichotomy or duality of a conflict is transcended or how it is transcended [1].
[edit] Religion
Kireevsky asserted that "the sum total of all Christians of all ages, past and present, comprise one indivisible, eternal living assembly of the faithful, held together just as much by the unity of consciousness as through the communion of prayer".[2]
Starting with Vladimir Soloviev, sobornost was regarded as the basis for the ecumenical movement within the Russian Orthodox Church. Sergei Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Pavel Florensky were notable proponents for the spirit of sobornost between different Christian factions. The Pochvennichestvo perspective of sobornost held that sobornost means that one compromises themselves to the truth rather than the truth being subjective to each individual. Rather than compromising the truth to the individual.
[edit] Quotes
Nikolai Lossky explained that sobornost' involved "the combination of freedom and unity of many persons on the basis of their common love for the same absolute values."[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (1995). Likening it to the final by product after Plato's Metaxy. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01441-5
- ^ Ninian Smart, John Clayton, Patrick Sherry, Steven T. Katz. Nineteenth-Century Religious Thought in the West. Cambridge University Press, 1988. Page 183.
- ^ Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (1995). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01441-5. page 28
