Technological Content of Religion: Statement of the Problem
Evgeny Nagornov
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2019-11.3.1-160-179
Abstract:

The subject of this article is the ideological proximity of religion and technology in culture. The author examines the dialectical interaction of the cultural worlds of religion and technology, compares the religious and technological worldviews, explores the typology of religious and technological subjects. Special attention is paid to the representation of the interaction of religion and technology in the European history of ideas, as well as the ontological status of thinking in the cultural practices of religion and technology. A special contribution of the author in the study of the topic is the search for new methodological approaches to the conceptualization of the interaction of religion and technology. On the basis of the dialectical, comparative historical, genealogical, structuralist methods, the study revealed that religion, like technology, in its historical formation is repelled not from thinking, not from the hidden truth of being, but from the activist will of its subjects. That is, they rely not on the revelation of being, but on its doing, on its further transformation. Hence, the main problem of the research lies in the cultural analysis of the mental installations of technological and religious subjects; in the analysis of the status of thinking in their subjective practices; in the consideration of their value attitudes. In addition, the work extended the popular instrumentalist understanding of technology to a separate activist value outlook. The author rejects the quantitative average material measurement of the technology in favor of its qualitative ideological measurement. As a result of the analysis of different methodological approaches and concepts, it is possible to establish a certain ideological proximity between the cultural worlds of religion and technology, as well as between their actors. The main conclusions of the conducted research are: 1) the research gives reasonable examples of historical and culturological comparativistics of the named objects from the European history of ideas and modern philosophy of technology; 2) it reveals the similarity of values of religious and technological subjects, expressed in the rejection of thinking and being, characteristic of the substantialist worldview of antiquity. The novelty of the research lies in expanding the problems of studying religious phenomena, in developing new views on the theory of the origin of religion.

“Divine Service of Thanksgiving on the Great Victory at Poltava”: Historical Subjects and Literary Forms of the Baroque in the Traditional Liturgical Text
Natalya Bedina,  Vasiliy Matonin
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2019-11.3.1-180-193
Abstract:

The article is a study of the “Divine Service of Thanksgiving ...”, dedicated to the Poltava victory of 1709, according to a handwritten copy (the first half of the XVIII century) from the Chekuevo village, Onega district of the Arkhangelsk region. Hermeneutic analysis of the service text and the study of the manuscript history reveal the significant characteristics of the Peter's time culture. The service text, attributed to Archbishop Theophilactus (Lopatinsky), is strictly canonical, but while meeting the traditional service form, the author creates his work in accordance with the Baroque aesthetics of the modern era. Using the moral and rhetorical exegesis principles allows Archbishop Theophilactus to extract “all the potency of the visual” (A.V. Mikhailov) from the verbal image. Traditional expressions in the battle description acquire visual expressiveness. At the same time, the author does not draw the detailed battle pictures, but only names the most significant semantic points. One of such significant events for the author is the fact of Charles XII wound in the leg. It is subjected to multilayer allegorical interpretation in the text. “Emblematic” thinking of the era is manifested in a special attention to the exegesis of the Swedish heraldic lion. Freedom of association and a wide scope of combining meanings is the essence of the Baroque combination game as a manifestation of creative thought, the very essence of human culture. Throughout the eighteenth century, the text of the “Divine Service of Thanksgiving ...”, published in 1709, 1711 and 1717, was distributed in manuscript copies. One of such lists is the manuscript found by this article authors in the Chekuevo village. The manuscript history connects such historical subjects as Peter I's visit to the Russian North and the Solovetsky monastery and the events of the Northern war. It reveals the Northern peasantry's awareness of involvement in the naval successes of Russia, and demonstrates the specifics of the peasant and monastery libraries functioning.