Abstract
I detect a specific attitude to Byzantium (“the Byzantine Enlightenment”) in Ivan Kireevsky’ Slavophile article “On the Character of Enlightenment in Europe” (1852). I qualify this attitude as Byzantinocentrism. I take that as a focal point and, against this background, consider the image of Byzantium in Kireevsky and some thinkers of his social circle. It allows me to trace the most important lines of attitudes to Byzantium in the Russian historiosophical literature and opinion journalism of the nineteenth century. I detect two opposite lines in perceiving Byzantium in Kireevsky’s early social circle: the anti- and pro-Byzantine ones. The first line goes back to an anti-Byzantine message, characteristic of the epoch of Enlightenment. It found its manifestation in G. W. F. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History. I point to the traces of the implicit polemics with Hegel’s anti-byzantinism in Kireevsky and identify the context of these polemics in Arist Kunick. As well, I outline how these lines worked in Pyotr Chaadaev and Alexander Pushkin. Then I distinguish between how the image of Byzantium was presented, first, in Kireevsky’s earlier Slavophile article “On the Character of Enlightenment in Europe” and, second, in his last article “On the Necessity and Possibility of the new Foundations for Philosophy” (1856). In the latter article, which sees Byzantium as bipolar, I find another view on Byzantium. I suggest that this view on Byzantium as a bipolar entity goes back to Alexey Khomyakov’s Semiramis. My point is that this difference in the views on Byzantium is paradigmatic and it reflects a division that was present in the Russian Slavophile-conservative milieu of that time. I suggest that this division stands behind another division within the same milieu, which was politically oriented, the one in relation to the Greek-Bulgarian ecclesiastical question. I analyze how both monopolar (Byzantinocentric) and bipolar views on Byzantium were reflected in the Greek-Bulgarian question as it was considered by Alexey Khomyakov and Terty Filippov. I find a context for developing Kireevsky’s attitude towards Byzantium in François Guizot’s historiosophic scheme as well.
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Notes
I am grateful to Basil Lourié for drawing my attention to this publication.
Cf. Evtuhov (2003, p. 57).
On the relationship between Chaadaev and Kireevsky, see Milyukov (1897, p. 304).
The original French text is «nous allions chercher dans la misérable Byzance… le code moral qui devait faire notre éducation» (Chaadaev 1991, p. 97).
Thus, Hegel’s philosophy of history constitutes the important context for the historiosophy of Aleksey Khomyakov. Cf. Dmitriyev (2020, pp. 208–209).
This fact has not been mentioned in the studies concerning the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in the Slavophiles, and Ivan Kireevsky I know, in particular, in the fundamental study by Dmytri Chyzhevsky (1934).
This article was written by Kunick in German (later, having lived in Russia for a while, Kunick started to write in Russian) and published in Moskvityanin in P. Pyaterikov’s translation.
In particular, Kunick helped the foundation of the first in Russia (and existing until now) specialized academic periodical, devoted to Byzantium: the magazine Vizantiyskiy Vremennik [The Byzantine Chronicles]. See Lappo-Danilevsky (1914, p. 1472).
I have had access only to the second edition of this book.
The correspondence between Pushkin and Kireevsky is published in Pushkin (1982).
The publishers of Pushkin’s letter (Lev Modzalevsky, Irina Semenko, and Boris Tomashevsky) do not say in their commentaries which brochure is meant here, but from the date of Pushkin’s letter and its content it follows beyond doubt that it is the 15th issue of the Telescope for 1836, in which the first Philosophical letter of Chaadaev was published.
On Pushkin’s pro-Byzantine position expressed in his deliberations on the Russian language and the historical context of this position, see Vinogradov (1935, pp. 18–19 and note 1).
The presupposition for this view is Kireevsky’s position that the figure of a philosopher and theologian is a center of the folk’s organism, its head (Kireevsky 1979, pp. 252, 256).
It can be mentioned that Peter Christoff in his fundamental work on Ivan Kireevsky pays attention to only one of the lines of Kireevsky’s attitude towards Byzantium that I have highlighted, the last one (Christoff 1972, pp. 214–215, cf. 145). At the same time, Abbott Gleason seems to notice only the first of them, i.e., the byzantinocentrist line of Kireevsky’s thought (Gleason 1972, pp. 262, 337).
In this regard, there is a familiarity between Khomyakov and Chaadaev. See McNally (1971, p. 100).
See Gerd (2014, pp. 69–83).
Russkaya Beseda, II, book 10 (Daskalov 1858b, pp. 1–64).
Russkiy Vestnik, February, book 2 (Daskalov 1858a, pp. 245–265).
Cf. Gerd (2014, pp. 30–32).
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This research was conducted at the Institute of Philosophy and Law of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences with financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF), the project No. 20-68-46021.
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Biriukov, D. Different faces of Byzantium. Stud East Eur Thought 75, 99–117 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-021-09449-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-021-09449-8