Religious art within postmodernism is discussed. Postmodern art, I argue, projects the myth of a miraculously generating chaos which cannot be maintained as absolute and therefore postmodern art cannot be genuinely religious. The myth is adopted for ideological, not philosophical reasons and calls for alternatives to make religious art possible.

The paper analyses A.F. Losev''s argument forthe identity of dialectical and mythicalthinking which forms the key part of his theoryof absolute mythology. Losev claims thatdialectical thinking is limited byphenomenological intuition. He fails torecognise, however, that this intuition itselfis a product of thinking. The same is true ofLosev''s concept of `life'' that is designed tolimit intellectual reflection. The mystery ofthe Absolute is, contrary to Losev''s claim, nota threshold that dialectical thinking cannotcross, but it is, in fact, realised only bysuch thinking. This (...) has a bearing on theChristian Neoplatonist doctrine of energisticsymbolism, which also plays a crucial part inLosev''s philosophy of myth. Under the pressureof the Neoplatonist tradition Losev violatesthe demands of dialectical thinking in favourof myth''s essential mysticism. And yet, becauseof the dialectical relation between rationalismand mysticism, Losev''s attempt was not afailure, but a valuable contribution to thetask of illuminating this relation. (shrink)

The paper argues that Nikolai Berdyaev’s doctrine of theurgy has remained relevant in today’s cultural-historical context because it highlights a continuing problem in the philosophy of art. The problem is the misunderstanding of the ludic nature of art, its role in the evolution of consciousness and transformation of reality. The author questions the idea that artistic play is deficient compared with religious expression. As a result of this critique, he proposes that the theurgic quest for a radically new form of (...) creativity was misguided and that the true meaning of the aspiration behind it is the need to comprehend culture as a dialectically articulated integral system of the cultural forms that constitute it. (shrink)

This brief paper is a polemical response to Mikhail Epstein’s review of the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought, and especially to his claim that the widely acknowledged tendency of Russian philosophy towards holistic thinking is akin to political totalitarianism, not to say its underlying cause. My argument is that philosophical and political or ideological thought are fundamentally different in their nature and purpose, and cannot be usefully identified with one another as Epstein does. Epstein’s claim is, I argue, a manifestation (...) of the modern outlook at large, incapable of grasping the difference and, worse, offering precisely the opposite of a solution to the problems posed by totalitarianism. (shrink)