Loosing My Religion: Special Edition, Starring Russian Philosophy

Hardy Partier that I am, I spent the waning hours of 2018 soberly reading the introduction to Copleston's A History of Philosophy, Volume 10: Russian Philosophy. And I have to say...it made me giddy. Not to mention happy. Happier than drinking copious amounts of alcohol and causing small explosions to happen in the street.

For one thing, because it means that, yes, I have finished the third omnibus...

...though I did have to push a little bit for the last week to make that happen. (I just really wanted to be done with that poor, falling apart Omnibus 3 and start clean for 2019. So I upped my reading ante to 14 pages a day for the last week.)

For another thing, it meant that I had 645 pages to go before finishing the whole History. Big Bucket List Item check-off.

For another another thing, because I have been awfully fond of several Russians for quite a few years now. (The usual suspects.)

And just a few days in, I am already feeling the love. I've met a couple of fellows whose thoughts really stirred my interest--enough so that I'm trying to locate complete works by them. This Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadayev (Пётр Я́ковлевич Чаада́ев) guy, for instance. Somebody really needs to make a biopic on that man.

And today I've been reading about another New To Me fellow for whom I have eyes: Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky (Ива́н Васи́льевич Кире́евский). Here's a little something something on that:

"...Kireevsky ingeniously finds a connection between rationalism and Protestantism."

Now, I suppose that's not stunningly insightful...but it made me stop and take two steps back to look in the shop window. It seems pretty obvious, really...but it never occurred to me to think of it in those terms before. And it is very useful to me.

I grew up in the Protestant church. (Lutheran, Missouri Synod.) It wasn't a joyous experience. Nor was it beclouded by the vapors of mysticism. Yet when I started doing my Church Walkabout, I pretty quickly tired of Protestant churches and decided to specialize in Catholic ones. I only gradually began to realize that all of the things that were absent from and scorned by the Protestants...ornate trappings, statues, crucifixes, incense, etc....were things that spoke to me, that called me into the other world which is, to me, where true religion resides. The Mystical stuff. Twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing, y'know.

So Kireevsky's seeing the connection between Protestantism and rationalism implies to me (and maybe he says this forthrightly, but I haven't beached on that shore yet) that Catholicism is connected to mysticism in a way that Protestantism really cannot be. In a way that Protestantism doesn't want to be. In a way that Protestantism wasn't designed to be.

And that non-rational element is what I want to find in a church. It might even be what I need to find in my life.

To be continued....