Tuesday, December 07, 2004
TRADITIONALISM AT MSU
The website of "Esoterica Journal" at Michigan State University includes a book on traditionalism in this booklist. It's the last book on the list.
There is another book listed that is of interest primarily because, according to George Weigel's biography, John Paul II was interested in these philosophers. The book is:
Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters, Boris Jakim, trs., (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997), cloth, 595 pp.
Pavel Florensky (1882-1937) is one of the most remarkable and tragic of the great Russian theologians in the past century. Along with Bulgakov, Soloviev, and above all, Berdyaev, Florensky (who was murdered in a Soviet Gulag) represents the meeting of Russian Orthodoxy with Western esotericism under the aegis of the Divine Sophia. The Pillar and Ground of the Truth is Florensky’s masterwork, consisting in twelve letters to a brother and friend, each of the letters preceded by an Hermetic, symbolically rich image. Among the primary chapters of Florensky's book is that on "Sophia," in which he writes directly on Soloviev and his relationship on the one hand to Boehmean theosophy, on the other to Polish and other Russian theosophers whose work to this day remains unknown, at least in English-speaking countries and probably in their homelands as well. Florensky’s book is one of the more unusual productions of the Russian theosophers; for those with an interest in Orthodoxy or theosophy, it is a major work well worth purchasing.
