A new anthropology

Sergej S. Khoružij's search for an alternative to the Cartesian subject in Očerki sinergijnoj antropologii

Kristina Stöckl

pp. 237-245

in: Studies in East European Thought 59 (3), 2007.

Abstract

In his latest book, Očerki sinergijnoj antropologii (2005), the Russian scholar of philosophy and theology Sergej S. Khoružij takes a step beyond his insightful studies on the history of Russian religious philosophy and on Hesychasm for which he is already held in high esteem by scholars of Russian thought and Orthodox theology. The publication of Očerki might well contribute to enlarging this readership, and is apt to provoke attention even among those philosophers who prefer to stay clear from religious philosophical debates. Očerki is a study in philosophical anthropology. It is a contribution to critical debates about the Cartesian foundations of modern philosophy informed by but not limited to the author’s grounding in Orthodox theology.1 Khoružij does bring forward a decidedly ‘Eastern’ response to the ‘crisis of the European subject’2which is so high on the agenda of contemporary philosophy, but he also reformulates this crisis in terms that go beyond the immediate horizon of...