Russian religious philosopher and psychologist. Philosophy of S. L. Frank

Frank Semyon Ludvigovich (1877-1950)

Russian philosopher and psychologist.

He paid great attention to the study of human spiritual activity, arguing that psychology should remain, first of all, a science about the soul, and not about mental processes. The most significant psychological work was F.’s essay “The Soul of Man” (1917). The main idea of ​​this work is the desire to return the concept of the soul to psychology instead of the concept of mental phenomena, which, from his point of view, do not have independent meaning and therefore cannot be the subject of science. He believed that the basis of psychology is and should be philosophy, and not natural science, since it does not study the real processes of objective existence in their causal or other natural patterns, but gives “general logical explanations of the ideal nature and structure of the mental world and its ideal relationship to other objects of existence." By soul he understands "the general generic nature of the world of mental existence, as a qualitatively unique integral unity."

Of great importance is the fact that F. in his work distinguished such concepts as mental life, soul and consciousness. In anomalous cases, he emphasizes, mental life seems to overflow its banks and flood consciousness; it is in these states that one can give some characterization of mental life as a state of distracted attention, in which objects and vague experiences associated with them are combined.

Coming to virtually the same conclusions as psychoanalysis, F. wrote that under a thin layer of hardened forms of rational culture smolders the heat of great passions, dark and light, which both in the life of an individual and in the life of the people as a whole can break through the dam and come out, destroying everything in its path, leading to aggression, rebellion and anarchy. Thus, from F.’s point of view, the main content of the soul is blind, chaotic, irrational mental life. At the same time, he proves that in play and in art a person spills out this vague, unconscious mental life and thereby complements the narrow circle of conscious experiences.

The theory of knowledge developed by F., as well as his understanding of the essence of the soul, is largely based on Leibniz's monadology. F. wrote that pure reason is super-individual and super-personal, and therefore cognition occurs not only and not so much on the basis of contact with the outside world, but by developing from within. At its periphery, the soul comes into contact with the objective side of existence and thus becomes the bearer of knowledge about the external world. However, through its internal channels the soul connects with pure reason and is thus filled not with relative concepts, but with pure objective knowledge.

Of all the psychologists of the first half of the twentieth century, F. most fully and accurately reflected the influence of religious philosophy, which originates in the position of Solovyov, on psychology. At the same time, his concept fully reflected both the advantages and disadvantages of such a position.

Semyon Ludwigovich Frank (1877-1950), Russian philosopher, religious thinker and psychologist. Participant in the collections “Problems of Idealism” (1902), “Milestones” (1909) and “From the Depths” (1918).

In 1922 Frank was expelled from Soviet Russia. Lived in Germany (until 1937), France (until 1945) and then in England. Among Frank's most significant works are Living Knowledge (1923), The Crash of Idols (1924), The Meaning of Life (1926), The Spiritual Foundations of Society (1930), The Incomprehensible (1939).

Like his predecessors, Sergei Trubetskoy and Solovyov, Frank emphasized that human consciousness, human selves are not cut off from each other. Real knowledge, real being are possible only when contact arises between people, unity arises. We do not live on isolated islands, but on a single continent. And this continent, which unites us all, is the last and true object of knowledge. A person learns not only the reflection of his own feelings, but also learns a certain substrate, depth. Later, the German philosopher Paul Tillich wrote that God is not the sky above us, but the depth of existence. However, Frank said it first.

In 1917, Frank published the book “The Soul of Man,” which was later published more than once. foreign languages. Frank has been translated into many languages, including Japanese, Czech, Polish; German, English - naturally, he himself wrote books in these languages. This book brilliantly analyzes the question of the unity of spiritual life, which cannot be cut, cannot be divided. This unity concerns not only our “I”, but also the field in which those “I”s to which we are turned are located. That is, “I”, then “we” and, finally, some mysterious substrate, which is the incomprehensible.

Frank had a negative attitude towards collectivism, which crushes the individual. Any dictatorship is contrary to freedom, and divine unity cannot exist without freedom, it is free.

S.L. Frank - “philosophical psychology” and absorbed most of the typical features of Russian spiritual psychology (Frank S.L., 1917). S.L. Frank, who set himself the task of “promoting... the restoration of the rights of psychology in the old, literal and precise meaning of the word,” believes that modern psychology in most cases is not a doctrine of the soul as a certain sphere of some internal reality, separated and opposed to the sensual. the objective world of nature, but is physiology - the doctrine “about the laws of so-called “mental phenomena”, divorced from their internal soil and considered as phenomena of the external objective world.” Because of this, “three quarters of the so-called empirical psychology and an even larger part of the so-called “experimental” psychology is not pure psychology, but either psychophysics and psychophysiology, or ... the study of phenomena, although not physical, but at the same time not mental " (Ibid. P.3).

According to Frank, true knowledge of the human soul is possible only through the combination of “religious intuition” (which allows one to “experience” the soul) and scientific or abstract knowledge (which is “the only form of publicly accessible and generally binding objectivity”). At the same time, the possibility of experimental knowledge of the soul as some kind of holistic, unified essence is especially emphasized, and not just as a multitude of individual mental phenomena (the Russian scientist calls this point of view psychic atomism) or only as manifestations of this soul, and not its essence. And by the concept of “soul” he understands only “the general nature of mental life,” regardless of how we think about this nature.

In accordance with the theses of Frank’s concept analyzed above, he also built a theoretical and methodological platform for “philosophical psychology.” Its tasks are:

knowledge not of individual, isolated, isolated mental phenomena, but of the nature of the “soul” by the method of introspection, which is understood as “immanent clarification of the self-conscious inner life of the subject in its generic... essence” (P.29);

determining the place of the "soul" in common system concepts, its relations to other areas of existence. And in this case (with this understanding of the tasks of philosophical psychology) it differs from real ones, incl. natural sciences, as well as from disciplines engaged in the knowledge of “the kingdom of Logos or ideal being” (logic, ethics, aesthetics, religious philosophy, etc.), since the goal is not the knowledge of God or the knowledge of the world, but the comprehension of being, revealed in self-knowledge. The object of philosophical psychology is man as a “concrete bearer of reality” (pp. 29-30).

Elsewhere, Frank clarifies his own understanding of mental life, again emphasizing its integrity: “Our mental life is not a mechanical mosaic of some kind of mental pebbles called sensations, ideas, etc., not a pile of mental grains of sand raked by someone, but some unity, something primary-continuous and whole, so that when we use the word “I”, this word corresponds not to some vague and arbitrary concept, but to a clearly conscious (albeit difficult to define) fact

Now let us dwell on the main, in our opinion, provisions developed by Frank as one of the representatives of theological psychology, and which distinguish his approach from others, primarily natural science and materialism.

1. Frank recognizes mental life as a special world, not reducible only to material-objective existence and delimited from the objective world. Moreover, mental life is not only a real fact from the point of view of objective consciousness. This peculiar world exists and exists as what it is in the sense “in which and what it is for itself.” And it is precisely in this understanding of its independence and independence that the spiritual world has own terms lives, “meaningless and impossible in another plane of existence, but the only natural and real ones in itself” (pp. 55-56).

2. The main features of mental life are recognized:

Its non-extension or, more precisely, non-spatiality, because for images as elements of mental life, extension is not the form of their existence, but only “a simple formless, immediate and indefinable internal quality” (p. 95).

Timelessness of mental life. Since the area of ​​the psyche is “the area of ​​experience, of directly subjective existence” (p. 90), then, in its essence, experience is devoid of measurable duration and is not localized in time. And only when a person begins to think about experience, replacing its “inexpressible immediate nature with its image in the objective world” (p. 96), can we talk about determining the time of experience.

Immeasurability as one of the main differences between mental life and the objective world, due, respectively, to its first two features.

“Continuity, unity, formlessness of unity” of mental life (p. 96). Soul life is neither a definite plurality nor a definite unity. It is only “a material intended and capable of becoming both true unity and true multiplicity, but precisely only formless material for both” (p. 98).

The unlimitedness of mental life, the absence of a limited and definite volume. At the same time, “it has no boundaries, not because it embraces infinity, but because its positive content in its extreme parts in some elusive way “comes to naught”, without any boundaries or outlines” (p. 102) .

We can say that all these features only from different sides characterize the essential feature of the mental world - its uncertainty and formlessness, which actually distinguishes it from everything objective and logically determined.

1) the soul as an emerging unity, i.e. as the beginning of “activity or life” (p. 165);

2) the soul as a bearer of knowledge emanating from the “incomprehensible depths of existence” and concentrating in the individual consciousness (p. 190);

3) soul as the unity of spiritual life (i.e., the objective and subjective aspects of mental life), which acts as a form and stage of consciousness.

In other words, what is outlined here is, as it were, the evolution of a person’s inner life, when (1) from pure mental life as the lowest state (where there is neither subject nor object, there is no distinction between “I” and “not-I”, but there is only pure and universal potency - the formless community of the spiritual element), (2) through the isolation of the contents of objective consciousness from mental life and the formation of the world opposing it - “personal self-consciousness of the individual “I” (p. 218) (state of self-consciousness), (3) to the highest state of spiritual life, where the opposition between subject and object, “I” and “not-I”, internal and external being is significantly modified (compared to the previous state), for example, “I” recognizes itself as “only a partial radiation of the absolute unity of life and a spirit that rises above the opposition between subject and object and above the opposition between different subjects" (p. 129).

Thus, at the last stage there occurs, as it were, an actualization, the realization of that “embryonic state”, the originality of which was in pure mental life (p. 129).

Essentially, S.L. Frank in his “philosophical psychology”, generalizing many ideas of his time (James, Bergson) and relying on the starting points of Russian religious and philosophical thought (understanding of consciousness, interpretation of the relationship between faith and knowledge, refraction of epistemology through the prism of ontology, recognition of the importance of the individual and the personal principle in the evolution of mental life, etc.), proposed a program of “new psychology,” which, in his opinion, was a way out of the opposition between materialistically and idealistically oriented psychological systems.

And in this sense ultimate goal spiritual psychology - the creation of favorable soil for the “true direction of the science of the spirit,” implying a situation when we will have instead of “the psychology of man-animal the psychology of man - the image of God” (p. 439), in our opinion, was fully realized by S.L. Frank, although he does not mention God in a single line of his work.

4. Organizational design of domestic spiritual psychology. Speaking about spiritual psychology in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. As an independent direction of psychological thought, we meant not only the presence of holistic, fairly logical and, in a certain paradigm, well-founded concepts or theoretical constructs. It is necessary, in addition, to indicate that this direction was formalized and organizationally. Thus, the existing St. Petersburg Philosophical Society largely promoted the work of this direction, although its doors were also open to representatives of other approaches to the nature of the inner world of man. Moreover, the Theological Academies also served as a kind of school within which religious and psychological ideas were tested. Thus, many graduates of academies wrote works for the degree of candidate or master of theology on psychological topics, for example, at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy in 1894, out of 42 graduates, 10 wrote works on psychological and philosophical issues (Report on the state ..., 1895 . Issue 2. P. 361), and in 1903, among the topics of dissertations, we find works with such topics as: “The development of pessimistic views in Russian life and literature of the 2nd half of the 19th century as a consequence of the impoverishment of faith (religious-psychological essay)", "Leibniz's doctrine of the connection of the soul with the body and Critical Assessment this teaching from a Christian point of view"; there are works that study the phenomena of "moral sanity", "freedom of conscience" and others, which now we could fully attribute to psychological problems (Ibid. p. 519).

Moreover, in the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, for example, there was a special Student Psychological Society, the chairman of which was V.S. Serebrennikov, extraordinary professor in the psychology department of the academy. More than 70 people participated in its work, and it had from 10 to 12 meetings per year. How much attention was paid to the activities of the society is evidenced by the fact that the rector of the academy attended meetings; moreover, “the useful activities of the society, witnessed by the Most Reverend Rector, attracted the merciful attention of the Most Reverend Bishop. At the request of the chairman of the society... V.S. Serebrennikov... Rector presented to His Eminence the rules of the society's activities, asking for the archpastoral blessing for the continued existence of the society, on the grounds expressed in the rules" (Ibid. p. 521). A positive decision was received. The resolution on the document on the activities of the Psychological Society read: “1903. January 4. Blessed. M.A.” (Ibid. p. 521). It should be noted that the clergy actively participated in scientific psychological events themselves. For example, members and guests of the 2nd All-Russian Congress on Educational Psychology were teachers from theological seminaries in Kaluga, St. Petersburg, Tver, and Saratov.

Thus, the development of spiritual psychology could only proceed incrementally, especially since everything was conducive to this: there were research centers; there were young followers of famous and serious thinkers; the list of journals publishing works by representatives of spiritual psychology expanded; there were a number of fruitful ideas and approaches. Moreover, constant communication at scientific meetings and sessions of the Moscow Psychological Society, the Religious and Philosophical Assembly in St. Petersburg and other scientific meetings contributed to the adjustment, clarification, and critical re-evaluation of conceptual constructs.

However, with the beginning of revolutionary transformations in Russia, and even more so after the victory October revolution The fate of spiritual psychology has changed significantly...

While still a high school student, Frank became interested in Marxism and took an active part in the activities of Marxist circles. In 1894, after graduating from high school, he entered the law faculty of Moscow University, but left it in 1896 without passing the exams. In 1899 S.L. Frank was arrested for revolutionary activities and expelled from Moscow. That same year he went to Germany, where he continued his studies in Heidelberg and Munich. During these years, Frank moved away from Marxism and became one of the consistent critics of this teaching, which was reflected in the book “Marx’s Theory of Value and Its Significance” (1900).

In 1901 S.L. Frank received the right to take and passed the exams for the university course, returned to Russia and began literary and philosophical activity. He took part in the famous collection "Problems of Idealism" (1902), "Milestones" (1909), edited the weekly journals "Polar Star" and "Freedom of Culture" (1905-1906), and from 1907 headed the philosophical department in the magazine "Russian Thought". Since 1905, Frank has been an active participant in the activities of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets).

In 1911 S.L. Frank passed his master's exams and took the position of private assistant professor at St. Petersburg University. In the spring of 1913 - summer of 1914. he was on a scientific trip to Germany. Upon his return, in 1915, Frank's first major philosophical work was published - "The Subject of Knowledge. On the Foundations and Limits of Abstract Knowledge", which served as the basis for his master's thesis. Soon, in 1917, another book was published - “The Soul of Man. An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Mental Life.” With these books S.L. Frank became famous as an interesting and original philosopher.

During the years of the revolution, in 1917-1921. S.L. Frank was dean and professor of the Faculty of History and Philosophy at Saratov University. Returning to Moscow, he began teaching at Moscow University and took part in the creation and activities of the Philosophical Institute and the Academy of Spiritual Culture. In 1922, together with other Russian philosophers, publicists, writers S.L. Frank was expelled from Soviet Russia on the infamous "philosophical ship".

In exile, he settled in Berlin, was one of the founders of the Russian Scientific Institute, and lectured at the Religious and Philosophical Academy and at the University of Berlin. During these years, his books “Spiritual Foundations of Society”, “The Crash of Idols”, “The Meaning of Life” were published.

In 1937, fearing Nazi persecution of Jews, Frank moved to France, and from 1945 to England. During these years, he wrote and published the works “The Incomprehensible”, “God With Us. Three Reflections”, “Light in the Darkness”, “Reality and Man. Metaphysics of Human Existence”, in which he finally formulated the principles of his philosophical system. S.L. died Frank on December 10, 1950 and was buried near London.

The entire philosophical system of S.L. Franka is based on the philosophy of unity, the founder of which is considered to be V.S. Soloviev. In addition, the ideological sources of Frank's philosophy were the teachings of Plato and Nicholas of Cusa.

According to the recognition of the largest researcher of Russian philosophical thought, Rev. V.V. Zenkovsky, in the works of S.L. Frank, we have “a very harmonious, well-thought-out system... Logic, epistemology, metaphysics, anthropology, ethics - developed by him... very deeply.” And it is no coincidence that V.V. Zenkovsky wrote that “in terms of the strength of Frank’s philosophical vision, one can without hesitation call him the most outstanding Russian philosopher in general.” And the main merit of S.L. Frank is that he introduced a serious rational element into the Russian religious and philosophical tradition, combining independent rational thought with traditional religious faith. And therefore S.L. Frank managed to rationally express the super-rational essence of reality, to provide a reliable logical-gnoseological foundation for the metaphysics of unity.

According to S.L. Frank, unity constitutes the basis and essence of world existence: “There is nothing in the world and nothing is conceivable that could exist in itself, without any connection with anything else. Being is unity in which everything particular is and is conceivable precisely and only through its connection with something else." Even God is the main, but part of all-unity: “God, as the absolute fundamental principle or first principle, is all-unity, without which nothing is conceivable at all.” At the same time, God and the world are also a unity: “If the world, in comparison with God, is something “completely different,” then this otherness itself stems from God and is grounded in God... The world is not something identical or homogeneous with God, but it cannot to be something completely different and foreign to God.” And the main category that unites God with the world in unity is God-manhood: “Along with God-manhood, as an inseparably fused unity - and through its mediation - the God-dimensionality, theocossism of the world is simultaneously revealed to us.”

As a result, S.L. Frank comes to the conclusion that unity “permeates all that exists, is present, as such, in the smallest segment of reality... Everything concretely existing is rooted in being, as unity, and is saturated with its juices... Creative unconditional being is the dark maternal womb, in which it first arises and from which everything that we call the objective world originates."

So, all-unity predetermines the “primordial unity” of being, and, in turn, being is a super-rational all-unity.

Considering the structure of existence, S.L. Frank distinguishes three types, or three forms of being. The first form is “reality” (or “empirical reality”. By “reality” Frank understood what “truly exists”, the totality of material and spiritual phenomena of the world. Another form is “ideal being”, including “ideal essences”, other than “specifically existing “things” localized in space and time - precisely in the sense of superspatial and supertemporal unity." Thus, "ideal being" is Plato's "eidos", the "form" of real things existing in the "empirical reality." And finally, the third form of being is "reality." "Reality" is, in a way, the highest form of being, including both "reality" and "ideal being": "All reality, everything that we include into the composition of world existence, we are forced to contrast the broader concept of reality, which includes, in addition to reality, also supra-temporal, “ideal” being." Consequently, according to S. L. Frank, consciousness (which he considers “reality”) is not opposes being, but is included in being.

Being super-rational, being cannot be known using only simple logic or simple empirical experience. Therefore, Frank distinguishes between different types of knowledge. “Subject” (sensual, empirical) knowledge serves as a way of knowing “empirical reality.” “Abstract knowledge” (“intellectual contemplation”) allows one to understand the logical connections between the elements of reality, and thus penetrate into the world of “ideal existence.” Abstract knowledge brings into unity and into a system the data of experience, but this unity is rational and static and, as such, is only a “pale hint” of the true All-Unity.

Therefore, in addition to the “objective” and “abstract”, a person has, as S.L. wrote. Frank, “a special, and, moreover, primary, type of knowledge, which can be called living knowledge, or knowledge-life.” It is “living knowledge”, in which a person super-rationally merges with the object, empathizes with being, and it is possible to comprehend the true unity of the world: “In this spiritual attitude, the cognizable is not presented to us from the outside, as different from ourselves, but is somehow merged with our life itself. "And our thought is born and acts somehow from the depths of the most revealing reality, takes place in its very element. What we experience as our life, as if by itself, reveals itself to us - opens to our thought, which is inseparably present in this life." - wrote S.L. Franc. Thus, “living knowledge” does not fit into the framework of ordinary logic, but is “meta-logic”, which is capable of expressing the “metalological unity” of the world, or unity. From Frank’s point of view, “living knowledge”, as “meta-logic”, is essentially close to “intuitionism”, developed in the philosophy of N.O. Lossky. It is not for nothing that Frank accepts Lossky’s intuitionism as the only theory of knowledge that provides a way out of the impasse of the self-isolation of consciousness. After all, it was the theory of intuitionism that recognized that the subject and object of knowledge are in a unity that embraces them, and consciousness does not oppose being, but is included in being.

However, the knowledge of the unity of the world also has its limits. In the book "The Incomprehensible" S.L. Frank formulates a very important idea for his philosophy about the presence of the “Incomprehensible” in the All-Unity. Frank makes the distinction between “Incomprehensible to us” and “Incomprehensible in its own existence.” Through the most subtle analysis, he shows that at the bottom of all layers of existence - the external world, the world of self-consciousness and the timeless world of ideas - lies the inescapable irrational remnant of the real mystery of existence that surrounds us and within us. This “incomprehensible” permeates all of reality, testifies to itself everywhere and shines through all objects as a “manifest mystery.” But for Frank, the existence of the “Incomprehensible” in total unity is not a reason to deny the possibility of knowledge: “The Incomprehensible is not “night” in which “all cats are gray” and in the face of which the clear and distinct perception of the “daytime” visible appearance of the world would lose all meaning "The incomprehensible is, on the contrary, that unapproachable Light from which, on the one hand, the very “daytime,” everyday visibility of the world flows and in the face of which this ordinary “lightness” of the world itself turns out to be nothing but something dark, impenetrable, irrational.” Therefore, Frank states that “The Incomprehensible is comprehended through the comprehension of its incomprehensibility.”

Essentially, “The Incomprehensible” by S.L. Franca is the Absolute Deity of apophatic (negative) theology. In Frank's interpretation, the Absolute Incomprehensible is more than being. It is “potentiality” and “freedom”, it is what gives rise to being (Frank uses the word “to be able” as a noun to express the real potential of being).

At the same time, Frank's philosophical concept was not without contradictions. For example, V.V. Zenkovsky noted that S.L. Frank was not even successful in posing the problem of theodicy (justification of God), in particular, in the question of the essence of evil. In Frank's concept of unity, the world is brought too close to God, which is why it actually lacks the idea of ​​creation. Consequently, Frank's philosophical system, despite its religious and philosophical essence, is in some contradiction with traditional Christian doctrine. However, S.L. himself was aware of this fact. Frank, the task of introducing rational knowledge into Christian doctrine, from the point of view of Orthodoxy, is quite unconventional. On this occasion S.L. Frank wrote that he did not deal specifically with theological problems, but followed the classical tradition, in which philosophy was at once independent, religious, and fruitful.

The outstanding Russian philosopher, religious thinker and psychologist Semyon Ludvigovich Frank (born January 16, 1877 in Moscow; died December 10, 1950 in London) became widely known in Russian society, primarily as one of the authors and inspirers of collections of articles idealist philosophers directed against revolutionary theory and practice “Problems of Idealism” (1902), “Vekhi” (1909) and “From the Depths” (1918), which were characterized by V. Lenin as “reactionary” and “Black Hundred” " The fundamental feature of his philosophical style was that he sought a synthesis of rational thought and religious faith in the traditions of apophatic philosophy and Christian Platonism, in particular under the influence of Nicholas of Cusa and Vladimir Solovyov (in particular the latter’s teaching of positive unity).

Archpriest Vasily Zenkovsky, a historian of Russian philosophy who died in Paris, wrote that among the thinkers of this generation, Frank was the most philosophical - in the literal sense of the word: “He was a powerful philosophical intellect. He was not a publicist, he was not a theologian, although, of course, he had to write sharp journalistic articles, and in a number of his books he directly addressed theological topics. He was a man of thought, like many classics of world philosophy. He himself jokingly said about himself: “I’ve been dreaming all my life.” This, of course, was not idle dreaming, but deep contemplation. It was as if he was diving deeper into the ocean of thought, into the ocean of abstract schemes, and finally reaching the very bottom of reality.”

Semyon Frank was born into a family of Polish Jews. His father, doctor Ludwig Semyonovich Frank (1844-1882), moved to Moscow from the Vilna province during the Polish uprising of 1863, graduated from Moscow University in 1872, and then participated in Russian-Turkish war 1877-1878 (in particular, in the heroic defense of Sevastopol), for which he was awarded the Order of Stanislav and nobility.

In 1891, 9 years after the death of her husband, S. L. Frank’s mother, Rosalia Moiseevna Rossiyskaya, remarried the pharmacist V. I. Zak, who had recently returned from a ten-year Siberian exile, which he served for participating in the “People's will." As a child, Semyon Frank received a home education from his grandfather, Moisei Mironovich Rossiysky, who was one of the founders of the Jewish community in Moscow in the 60s of the 19th century and from whom he took an interest in philosophical problems religion. Grandfather was deeply religious and religiously educated person. He brilliantly knew the Hebrew language, the Bible, and ancient sacred literature; and when he was dying, he took Semyon (who was then 14 years old) to promise: always study the Scriptures, the Hebrew language and theology. The philosopher himself later recalled: “Formally, I did not fulfill his behest, but what my heart, my mind, my spiritual quest and, finally, my Christianity (he converted to Orthodoxy in 1912) were directed towards - all this was natural and an organic continuation of the lessons that I received from my grandfather.” His stepfather also had a significant influence on the formation of the worldview of young S. Frank, but from the other side: on his recommendation, he became acquainted with the works of Russian democrats Mikhailovsky, Pisarev, Lavrov.

In 1892, S. Frank's family moved to Nizhny Novgorod, where he graduated from high school. While still a high school student, S. L. Frank took part in Marxist circles, under the influence of which he then entered the Faculty of Law at Moscow University. While still a high school student and then a student, he was interested in Marxism (like N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov and the Trubetskoy brothers in his youth), because his supporters assured that Marxism finally gives scientific explanation social processes. S. Frank studied with pleasure “Capital” by K. Marx (only the first volume was published at that time), because he, like any young man with a developed intellect, was attracted by the fact that this huge book was written in heavy Hegelian language, but whoever understood it reached some heights. However, later, having already become a fairly prominent sociologist, S. Frank mercilessly criticized Marxist philosophy and sociology, showing their helplessness and unscientific nature. He pointed out that all these words that were written around, all these thick volumes, actually “gave birth to a mouse.”

S. Frank was arrested for participating in Marxist circles. He spent some time in prison (1899), and then was expelled. Soon after this he went abroad, where he worked in Berlin and Munich. It was in the 1890s. he finally breaks with the environment of revolutionaries (mainly the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Populists), because his own scientific thinking by that time had already been formed on completely different grounds.

It is not surprising, therefore, that S. L. Frank’s first published work, “Marx’s Theory of Value” (1900), was devoted specifically to the criticism of Marxism. In 1902, his first philosophical sketch (“Nietzsche and the Love of the Distant”) was published in the collection “Problems of Idealism” - from that time on, S. L. Frank’s work became entirely connected with the problems of philosophy itself.

In 1908, the philosopher married and began working on his master's thesis, in which he raised the most important questions in the theory of knowledge. After passing the master's exam (1912), S. L. Frank became a private assistant professor at St. Petersburg University and in the same year moved to Orthodox faith. In 1915 he defends his master's thesis (“The Subject of Knowledge”), which concerns the ontological conditions for the possibility of intuition as a direct perception of reality, thereby joining the current of intuitionism that was just emerging in Europe at that time.

The book “The Soul of Man,” published in 1917, was submitted by S. L. Frank in 1918 as a dissertation for his doctorate, but due to the outbreak of the revolution and civil war her defense no longer took place. In 1917, S. L. Frank was offered to become the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at Saratov University, one of the last centers of intellectual freedom. But then he returned to Moscow and in 1922 he was arrested there and, together with his family - his wife and three children, were expelled from Russia on the famous “philosophical ship” on which N. Berdyaev and two hundred other people who made up the Russian intellectual elite sailed. objectionable to the Bolshevik regime.

The European world was no stranger to Frank, as he spoke several languages ​​fluently. He initially settled in teaching in Berlin. The philosopher lectured in Berlin and Paris and worked a lot. During these years, he wrote the famous book “The Meaning of Life,” addressed primarily to young people; the book “The Crash of Idols”, in which he debunked Marxism and some other false and outdated concepts, in his opinion. At the same time, he wrote the books “Light in the Darkness” and “Spiritual Foundations of Society,” where he showed that a healthy society can only be when it has a spiritual foundation.

In the thirties, under the Nazis, S. L. Frank was deprived of his chair in Germany, he went to France and in the end, after the German occupation, he was forced to emigrate to England, to London, where he lived in the last post-war years until his death in 1950

In the philosophical teachings of S. L. Frank, one of the central places is occupied by such a cross-cutting theme for Russian religious philosophy (starting with V. Solovyov) as the theme of unity. In line with this, S. L. Frank believed that there are serious philosophical and logical arguments against subjective idealism. Since subjective idealism comes from the “I”, which stands at the center of the universe. During a dialogue with the world, a person discovers something in himself - something that can be called “you”. But there is something else - what we call “we”. Like his predecessors, Sergei Trubetskoy and Vladimir Solovyov, he emphasized that human consciousness, human “I” are not cut off from each other. Real knowledge, real being are possible only when contact arises between people, unity arises. We do not live on isolated islands, the philosopher emphasized, but on a single continent. And this continent, which unites us all, is the last and true object of knowledge. A person learns not only the reflection of his own feelings, but also learns a certain substrate, depth.

For S. L. Frank, as a philosopher, the relationship between science and religion was very important. Because he was not only a philosopher, but also a sociologist and a religious scholar. He has one small but fundamentally important book called “Religion and Science.” It was reprinted many times in the West, but was first published in those years when fierce anti-religious propaganda was carried out. In it, S. L. Frank briefly answers the questions posed by the era. “We affirm,” he says, “contrary to the prevailing opinion, that religion and science do not and cannot contradict one another for the simple reason that they talk about completely different things, and contradiction is possible only where two opposing statements are made.” about the same subject." He explains his idea in a series specific examples. A man sits on a train, sits motionless; the neighbor turns to him and says: “Can you sit still?” He says: “Sorry, I’m already sitting motionless.” Which one is right? Of course, the person who says that he sits motionless is right. But the one who reproached him is also right, because he is rushing at high speed - with the train. They speak on different planes. Approaches to the same phenomenon can be so different that it is impossible to put them on the same plane. The same applies to science and religion, the thinker claims. Here are his words: “...science takes the world as a self-contained system of phenomena and studies the relationships between these phenomena outside the relationship of the world as a whole, and therefore of each, even the smallest part, to its highest foundation, to its root cause, to its absolute the beginning from which it originated and on which it rests.” Science takes as a working hypothesis that the world is a ready-made closed system. “Religion cognizes precisely the relationship of the world, and therefore man, to this absolute fundamental principle of existence, to God, and from this knowledge it derives an understanding of the general meaning of existence, which remains outside the field of view of science.”

For understanding the worldview views and psychological concept of S. L. Frank, his book “The Soul of Man,” first published in 1917, is of key importance. Subsequently, it was published many times in foreign languages, including Japanese, Czech, Polish, German, English, etc. In this The book brilliantly analyzes the question of the unity of spiritual life, which cannot be cut, cannot be divided. This unity concerns not only our “I”, but also the field in which those “I”s to which we are turned are located. That is, “I”, then “we” and, finally, some mysterious substrate, which is the incomprehensible.

The ideas of “The Soul of Man” are organically connected with another work by S. L. Frank - “The Meaning of Life”, where he, showing the unconditional primacy of the spiritual over the material, at the same time substantiates the necessity and meaningfulness of human everyday existence. In it, he writes, in particular, about this: “The covenant not to worry about tomorrow, for “the evil of the day is sufficient,” is not only a covenant not to overload oneself with excessive earthly worries, but at the same time a requirement to limit oneself to worries about real life, and not about objects of dreams and abstract thoughts. Today I live, and the people around me live; today is a matter of will and life. Tomorrow there is an area of ​​dreams and abstract possibilities. Tomorrow it is easy to accomplish the greatest feats, to benefit the whole world, to lead a reasonable life. Today, now, it is difficult to overcome and destroy your weakness, it is difficult to give a minute of attention to the poor and sick, to help them and the few, it is difficult to force yourself to do even a small moral deed. But precisely this small matter, this overcoming of myself, albeit in small things, this even insignificant manifestation of effective love for people, is my duty, it is a direct expression and the closest test of the degree of true meaningfulness of my life.” Based on such premises, he absolutely logically comes to the conclusion: “Thus, external, worldly work, being derived from the main, spiritual work and only comprehended by it, must stand in our common spiritual life in its proper place, so that the normal spiritual balance. The powers of the spirit, strengthened and nourished from within, must flow freely outward, for faith without works is dead; the light coming from the depths must illuminate the darkness outside. But the powers of the spirit should not go into service and captivity to the senseless forces of the world, and darkness should not drown out the eternal Light. This is, after all, that living Light that enlightens every person coming into the world; this is the God-man Christ himself, who is for us “the way, the truth and the life” and who, precisely because of this, is the eternal and inviolable meaning of our life.”

Having resolved for himself at the level of methodology and epistemology the problem of the relationship and interaction of “I,” “you,” and “we,” S. L. Frank then uses these developments in his social theory. Thus, he had a negative attitude towards collectivism, which crushes the individual. Any dictatorship, in his opinion, contradicts freedom, and divine unity cannot exist without freedom; it is free in its very essence.

Based on this, S. L. Frank makes a disappointing diagnosis of socialism: “Socialism in its main socio-philosophical plan is to replace the entire individual will with a collective will... putting in its place the existence of a “collective”, as if to mold or glue monads into one continuous the dough of the “masses” is a meaningless idea that violates the basic irreducible principle of society and can only lead to paralysis and disintegration of society. It is based on an insane and blasphemous dream that a person, for the sake of planning and orderliness of his economy and the fair distribution of economic goods, is able to renounce his freedom, his “I” and become entirely and completely a cog in the social machine, an impersonal medium of action of general forces. In fact, it cannot lead to anything other than the unbridled tyranny of despotic power and the dull passivity or bestial rebellion of the subjects.”

The social theory of S. L. Frank was not just a theory for him - his political position has always been principled. When, at the end of the war, N. Berdyaev, as a sign of solidarity with warring Russia, wanted to accept Soviet citizenship and involuntarily became carried away by the calls of those who came from Soviet Union and said that now we will have freedom, now everything will be fine with us, S. L. Frank was indignant. He wrote: “I knew people who received the task of attracting emigrants. One hierarch, whom I knew, in general, a noble man, went to Paris with a whole bag of Russian soil: he threw it from the balcony, the emigrants caught it with tears and took Soviet passports, and went straight to the camps. This was a tragedy for many people. Some wanted to believe, others did not want to believe - it was suspicious: those who left disappeared, as if they had sunk into the water, all kinds of information stopped coming from them. But the moment was joyful - victory was approaching. S. Frank had an acute disagreement with N. Berdyaev about this, S. Frank wrote to N. Berdyaev that he had succumbed to influence and thought that everything was fine there, behind the cordon, but he, S. Frank, did not believe in it, believes that tyranny continues its work, despite the victory of the people.

Speaking about the significance of S. L. Frank and his teachings for modern times, it would be most appropriate to quote here the words of Father Alexander Men: “... in his philosophy, Frank showed that the religious worldview, Christianity, is by no means something irrational. Nowadays it often happens that a person, having turned to the Christian faith, thinks that for this he must throw overboard his thinking, his logic, his reason. And people like Vladimir Solovyov, Sergei Trubetskoy or Semyon Frank show that the powerful work of the mind not only does not undermine the foundations of the religious worldview, but, on the contrary, gives it comprehension, and sometimes even justification. Of course, the fundamental justification for Frank was his experience, the deep experience of comprehending reality as a whole, the deep experience of contact with the divine as something that can never be defined by human language. But he passed this experience, common to all humanity, to all Christianity, through the crystallizing gates of reason and managed to talk about it not only in the language of poetry, in the language of mysticism, but also in the transparent, clear language of a sage-philosopher. And Frank remained a sage not only on the pages of his books, but also in his appearance - a calm, clear, unperturbed, happy man, despite the sorrowful pages of his life (exile, wandering around Europe), despite all the bitterness of our century. He walked along it and looked like a burning candle that was not shaken by the wind.”

Semyon Ludvigovich Frank is a major Russian philosopher, religious thinker and psychologist.

Participant in the collections “Problems of Idealism” (1902), “Milestones” (1909) and “From the Depths” (1918). He strove for a synthesis of rational thought and religious faith in the traditions of apophatic philosophy and Christian Platonism, in particular under the influence of Nicholas of Cusa and Vladimir Solovyov (especially the concept of positive unity).

Semyon Frank was born into a family of Polish Jews. His father, doctor Ludwig Semyonovich Frank (1844-1882) - a graduate of Moscow University (1872), moved to Moscow from the Vilna province during the Polish uprising of 1863, as a military doctor participated in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, was awarded Order of Stanislav and nobility. In 1891, 9 years after the death of her husband, S. L. Frank’s mother, Rosalia Moiseevna Rossiyskaya, remarried the pharmacist V. I. Zak, who had recently returned from a ten-year Siberian exile, which he served for participating in the “People's will." As a child, Semyon Frank was educated at home by his grandfather, Moisei Mironovich Rossiysky, who was one of the founders of the Jewish community in Moscow in the 60s of the 19th century and from whom he acquired an interest in the philosophical problems of religion. On the other hand, on the recommendation of his stepfather, he became acquainted with the works of Russian democrats Mikhailovsky, Pisarev, Lavrov. In 1892, the family moved to Nizhny Novgorod, where Frank graduated from high school, after which he entered Moscow University.

While still a high school student in Nizhny Novgorod, S. L. Frank took part in Marxist circles, under the influence of which he entered the law faculty of Moscow University (where he was a student of the famous professor A. I. Chuprov). In 1899 he was arrested and expelled from university cities. Soon after this he went abroad, where he worked in Berlin and Munich.

Frank's first published work (“Marx's Theory of Value”) was devoted to criticism of Marxism (1900). In 1902, his first philosophical sketch (“Nietzsche and the Love of the Distant”) was published in the collection “Problems of Idealism” - from that time on, Frank’s work became entirely connected with the problems of philosophy. After passing the master's exam (1912), Frank became a private assistant professor at St. Petersburg University and in the same year converted to the Orthodox faith. In 1915 he defended his master's thesis (“The Subject of Knowledge”), which concerns the ontological conditions for the possibility of intuition as a direct perception of reality, thereby joining the movement of intuitionism.

The book “The Soul of Man,” published in 1918, was presented by Frank as a dissertation for his doctorate, but due to the external conditions of Russian life, its defense could no longer take place. In 1917 Frank headed the Faculty of History and Philology at Saratov University, and from 1921 he held the Department of Philosophy at Moscow University. In 1922 he was expelled from Russia, settled in Berlin and became part of the Religious and Philosophical Academy organized by N. A. Berdyaev, with whom he worked together in Moscow (at the “Academy of Spiritual Culture”). In 1930 he moved to France, from where he moved to London in 1945.

Frank believed that there were serious philosophical and logical arguments against subjective idealism. Subjective idealism comes from the “I”, which stands at the center of the universe. During a dialogue with the world, a person discovers something in himself - something that can be called “you”. But there is something else - what we call “we”.

Like his predecessors, Sergei Trubetskoy and Solovyov, Frank emphasized that human consciousness, human “I” are not cut off from each other. Real knowledge, real being are possible only when contact arises between people, unity arises. We do not live on isolated islands, but on a single continent. And this continent, which unites us all, is the last and true object of knowledge. A person learns not only the reflection of his own feelings, but also learns a certain substrate, depth. Later, the German philosopher Paul Tillich wrote that God is not the sky above us, but the depth of existence. However, Frank said it first.

In 1917, Frank published the book “The Soul of Man,” which was subsequently published more than once in foreign languages. Frank has been translated into many languages, including Japanese, Czech, Polish, German, English; Naturally, he himself wrote books in these languages. This book brilliantly analyzes the question of the unity of spiritual life, which cannot be cut, cannot be divided. This unity concerns not only our “I”, but also the field in which those “I”s to which we are turned are located. That is, “I”, then “we” and, finally, some mysterious substrate, which is the incomprehensible.

At the same time, Frank had a negative attitude towards collectivism, which crushes the individual. Any dictatorship is contrary to freedom, and divine unity cannot exist without freedom, it is free.

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4. Religious and philosophical psychology

In order to give a holistic idea of ​​the palette of trends in psychological thought in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, it is necessary to dwell in more detail on the analysis of psychological teachings and views developed in line with the descriptive approach to the knowledge of mental reality.

This direction was quite powerful and influential; it was represented by a variety of concepts and theories, sometimes differing significantly in a number of their important provisions and being in a state of controversy among themselves. However, all works related to this direction were united by the fact that they were based on the ideas and provisions of Russian theological and religious-philosophical thought. And therefore, sometimes in historical and psychological research this direction is generally referred to as “idealistic psychology.” However, from the perspective of modernity and taking into account the key role of the concept of “soul” in the concepts of this direction, it would be more accurate to designate it as Russian spiritual or religious-philosophical psychology.

At the same time, it is advisable, in our opinion, within its framework to distinguish theological and religious-philosophical psychology itself as separate independent movements. Representatives of the first of them - theologians - in their psychological constructions relied, as a rule, on the canonical texts of dogmatic Orthodoxy and were mainly hierarchs or ministers of the church, teachers of courses, philosophy and psychology in Theological Academies and seminaries, and religious philosophers (as a rule, professors and teachers of philosophical or historical departments of universities), who made up the second trend - on individual provisions of the philosophical systems of European thinkers (Hegel, Kant, etc.) and original domestic philosophical constructs, expressed in a religious vein. Today, a serious study and analysis of the works that make up this direction is of particular relevance in connection with the search for ways to spiritually revive Russia, and also due to the fact that until recently, ideological-political and atheistic motives prevailed in the assessment and presentation of the essence of these teachings rather than scientific and educational. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of concepts in line with domestic religious-philosophical psychology were in Soviet time and completely forgotten, as if erased from the history of Russian pre-revolutionary psychology, which, of course, significantly impoverished Russian psychological thought.

Traditions of religious and psychological teaching, dating back to the beginnings of ancient Russian writing and domestic philosophical thought, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. were presented by teachers and philosophers of theological seminaries and academies, scientists of religious orientation: Nikanor, Archbishop of Kherson, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), S.S. Gogotsky, V.S. Serebrennikov, N.O. Lossky, V.I. Nesmelov, V. .A. Snegirev, P.D. Yurkevich, V.V. Rozanov, I.I. Lapshin, S.F. Frank, L.M. Lopatin, S. Trubetskoy and E. Trubetskoy and others.

The flourishing of spiritual psychology at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. was associated with changes in the spiritual life of Russian society. The famous historian of Russian religious thought G. Florovsky wrote: “In those years, it suddenly became clear to many that man is a metaphysical being... The religious need is awakening again in Russian society... The religious theme is now becoming a theme of life, not only a theme of thought. .. The thirst for faith flares up. The need for “spiritual life” is born, the need to build your soul."

At the same time, we should recall the conclusion of N.A. Berdyaev that, in general, for the Russian consciousness of the 19th century. characterized by interest in combining theoretical and practical reason, achieving integrity in knowledge. And this presupposes “knowledge by the totality of spiritual forces, and not by one mind” 1. And from this point of view, the opinion that not only theological teachings themselves, but also “Russian irreligious ones - socialism, populism, anarchism, nihilism and our atheism itself had a religious theme and was experienced with religious pathos" [ibid., p. 183]. As noted, “all the deepest Russian thinkers and philosophers were at the same time religious philosophers and theologians.”

The initial basis of the religious-psychological direction was: 1) the original Russian philosophy, which is “always totalitarian in the formulation of problems, always connecting theoretical and practical reason, always religiously colored,” and 2) the features of the Russian worldview in general, implicitly contained in the main provisions of these teachings.

The features of the Russian worldview are considered in the works of S.L. Frank, V.F. Ern, S.N. Trubetskoy and other scientists, who highlighted the following features:

1. Intuition in search of truth, leading to a religious-emotional interpretation of life, the desire for speculativeness, rather than systematic and conceptual knowledge. It was this anti-rationalism of Russian thinking that led to the creation of an original theory of knowledge (ontological epistemology), which formed the basis of domestic religious and psychological constructions, the essence of which is the recognition of life experience as the basis for knowledge of truth.

2. Ontology, a craving for realism, which leads to the recognition of the primacy of the fact of life over thinking, when cognition is carried out through experience, for it is “life that is... the real connection between the “I” and being, while “thinking” is only a perfect connection between them." V.F. Ern noted that Russian philosophical thought in contrast to rationalistic constructions of the meonistic type (with their abstraction from life, detachment from existence), it is always “essentially concrete, that is, imbued with ontology, which naturally follows from the basic principle of Logos” 1.

3. The primacy of moral and social principles in Russian religious, worldview and philosophical constructs.

4. Deep religiosity, acting as a principle of philosophizing, opposing the rationalistic principle. In this regard, the well-known domestic specialist in the field of history of philosophy V.V. Zenkovsky notes that for the Russian people Christianity acted not only as a religion, but also as a worldview.

5. Personalism, understood as an inextricable connection between the Word and the Personality of a person (including a scientist or thinker). Therefore, it is not enough to know “what is said or written,” by whom and in what life context, but significant attention must be paid to “the silent thought of actions, movements of the heart, to the hidden thought hidden in the complex, moving pattern of an individual face.”

First of all, it is these features of the Russian worldview that form the basis of Russian spiritual psychology. In general terms, the key ideas of this psychology can be designated as psychological ontologism and are reduced to a number of key provisions:

1. Consideration of the soul as a sphere of internal reality, and the inner world of a person, not in its superficial expression, from sensory-objective conditions and phenomenological manifestations, but in its internal content, from the inside, that is, through identifying how mental experience or a mental phenomenon is given to the person himself, his “I”, and not to an outside observer.

2. Recognition of the human mental world as some independent entity that has its own laws that are not correlated with the laws of the material world.

3. Affirmation of the continuity of the process of consciousness. One of the representatives of spiritual psychology, V.A. Snegirev, emphasized that “the process of consciousness must be recognized as continuously continuing throughout life, therefore, in a dream, in the deepest fainting, etc., its interruption would be equal to the cessation of the life of the soul” ( quoted from). And from here followed the denial of unconscious mental phenomena, and consequently the idea that the mental area is wider than the “special” area of ​​the conscious. In this case, the following argument is used: “The absence of memory about the phenomena of consciousness cannot serve as proof of the absence of the phenomena themselves. Such proof would be no higher than the clearly incorrect statement of the hypnotist that during his hypnosis he did not live a conscious life at all” [ibid., p. . 18].

4. Recognition of the thesis about the identity of faith and knowledge both in their psychological nature and logical structure, and, accordingly, the idea that faith is possible as real knowledge, that not only external perception and observation, but also “self-revelation of the spirit” can serve as a source of his knowledge. Much attention has been paid to the substantiation of this position within the framework of spiritual psychology, as evidenced by the abundance of articles on this topic published in various philosophical, religious, theological and other publications. The main conclusion of these publications is quite accurately reflected by V. Serebrennikov, who noted that “based on the testimony of internal experience, we must admit that the self-conscious spirit opposes its states to itself and in this form is directly aware of them. Direct consciousness of mental phenomena, or internal perception, is the first and most important source of knowledge of the spirit."

Thus, the understanding of knowledge as “faith to the highest degree of its thoroughness” and, accordingly, self-revelation of the spirit as the only experimental source of obtaining direct knowledge about mental life, allows representatives of spiritual psychology to come to the conclusion about the possibility of accurate experimental knowledge of mental phenomena not only by so-called objective methods, but by methods of introspection.

5. Recognition of the presence of free will in humans with an original interpretation of the very concept of “free will”. As V.I. Nesmelov writes, “the real freedom of human will is revealed only to the extent that a person may not want to do what he wants.” And further: “The will can subordinate itself to a certain rule of life, and in this subordination of the will general rule life consists of all its freedom. To want something and to have the opportunity to fulfill your desire and yet not do what you want, in the name of a recognized rule of life, is the highest conceivable degree of development of free will" [ibid., p. 177].

In accordance with these starting points, which have certain variations in views different representatives Russian religious-philosophical psychology, and the theoretical-methodological and problemological space occupied by psychological teachings, developing in line with patristic traditions. As an example, let us characterize Frank’s system of psychological views, called “philosophical psychology” and incorporating the most typical features of Russian spiritual psychology.

Frank, who set himself the task of “promoting... the restoration of the rights of psychology in the old, literal and precise meaning of the word” [ibid., p. III], believed that contemporary psychology in most cases is not a doctrine of the soul, as a certain sphere of some internal reality, separated and opposed to the sensory-objective world of nature, but is physiology or a doctrine “about the laws of so-called “mental phenomena”, separated from their internal soil and considered as phenomena of the external objective world" [ibid., 3]. Because of this, “three quarters of the so-called empirical psychology and an even larger part of the so-called “experimental” psychology is not pure psychology, but either psychophysics and psychophysiology, or ... the study of phenomena, although not physical, but at the same time not mental "[ibid., Z].

According to Frank, true knowledge of the human soul is possible only through the combination of “religious intuition” (which allows one to “experience” the soul) and scientific or abstract knowledge (which is the only form of “publicly accessible and generally binding objectivity”). At the same time, the possibility of experimental knowledge of the soul as some integral, unified essence is especially emphasized, and not only as a multitude of individual mental phenomena (the Russian scientist calls this point of view psychic atomism) or only as manifestations of this soul, and not its essence. In the concept of “soul” he put only the idea of ​​the “general nature of mental life”, regardless of how we think about it.

Accordingly, he builds the theoretical and methodological platform of “philosophical psychology.” Its tasks are: knowledge not of individual, isolated, isolated mental phenomena, but of the nature of the “soul”; determining the place of the “soul” in the general system of concepts, its relations to other areas of existence. The main method is defined as the method of self-observation, which is understood as “immanent clarification of the self-conscious inner life of the subject in its generic... essence” [ibid., p. 29]. With this interpretation of the basic foundations, philosophical psychology differs from specific ones, incl. natural sciences, as well as from disciplines engaged in the knowledge of “the kingdom of Logos or ideal being” (logic, ethics, aesthetics, religious philosophy, etc. [ibid., p. 30], since the goal is not knowledge of God or knowledge of the world, but knowledge of being, revealed in self-knowledge. The object of philosophical psychology is man as a “concrete bearer of reality" [ibid., p. 29]. Elsewhere, Frank clarifies his own understanding of mental life, again emphasizing its integrity: “Our mental life is not mechanical a mosaic of some spiritual pebbles, called sensations, ideas, etc., not a pile of spiritual grains of sand raked by someone, but some unity, something primary-solid and whole, so that when we use the word “I”, this the word corresponds not to some vague and arbitrary concept, but to a clearly conscious (albeit difficult to define) fact [ibid., p. 17].

Frank recognizes mental life as a special world that cannot be reduced only to material-objective existence, delimited and independent from the objective world and having its own conditions of life, “meaningless and impossible on another plane of existence, but the only natural and real ones in itself” [ibid., With. 55-56]. The main features of mental life are recognized:

1. Its non-extension, or more precisely, non-spatiality, since for images as elements of mental life, extension is not the form of their existence, but only “a simple formless, immediate and indefinable internal quality” [ibid., p. 95].

2. Timelessness of mental life. Since the area of ​​the psyche is “the area of ​​experience, of directly subjective existence” [ibid., p. 90], then in its essence, the experience is devoid of measurable duration and is not localized in time. And only when a person begins to think about experience, replacing its “inexpressible immediate nature with its image in the objective world” [ibid., p. 96] we can talk about determining the time of experience.

Accordingly, these two features of mental life determine one of its main differences from the objective world - “immeasurability.”

3. “Continuity, unity, formlessness of unity” of mental life [ibid., p. 96]. Soul life is neither a definite plurality nor a definite unity. It is only “a material intended and capable of becoming both true unity and true multiplicity, but precisely only formless material for both” [ibid., p. 98].

4. Unlimitedness of mental life, the absence of a limited and definite volume: “it has no boundaries not because it embraces infinity, but because its positive content in its extreme parts in some elusive way “comes to naught” without having any or boundaries and outlines" [ibid., p. 102].

As for the description of a specific mental life realized in a specific “I,” Frank identifies three aspects of consideration of “the deep, primary agency in us, which we usually call primarily our “soul” [ibid., p. 134]:

The soul as a forming unity, i.e. “as the beginning of activity or life” [ibid., p. 165];

The soul as a bearer of knowledge emanating from the “incomprehensible depths of existence” and concentrating in the individual consciousness [ibid., p. 190] ;

The soul as the unity of spiritual life (i.e., the objective and subjective aspects of mental life), which acts as a form and stage of consciousness.

In other words, what is outlined here is, as it were, the evolution of the inner life of man, when from pure mental life as the lowest state (where there is neither subject nor object, there is no distinction between “I” and “not-I”, but there is only pure and universal potency , the formless community of the spiritual element), through the isolation of the contents of objective consciousness from mental life and the formation of the world opposing it - “personal self-consciousness of the individual “I” (state of self-consciousness) [ibid., p. 218] there is an ascent to the highest state of spiritual life, where the opposition of subject and object, "I" and "not-I", internal and external being is significantly modified (compared to the previous state). In particular, the "I" recognizes itself as "only a partial radiation of the absolute unity of life and spirit, rising and over the opposition between subject and object, and over the opposition between different subjects" [ibid., p. 129]. Thus, at the last stage, there is, as it were, an actualization, the implementation of that "embryo state", the originality of which was in pure mental life " [ibid.].

In fact, in his “philosophical psychology,” generalizing many ideas of his time (James, Bergson) and relying on the starting points of Russian religious and philosophical thought, the scientist proposed a program of “new psychology,” which, in his opinion, was a way out of the opposition to materialistic and idealistically oriented psychological systems. And in this sense, the ultimate task of spiritual psychology is to create favorable soil for the “true direction of the science of the spirit,” implying a situation “when we will have, instead of the psychology of man-animal, the psychology of man-the-image of God” [ibid., p. 439], in our opinion, was realized by Frank, although he does not mention God in a single line of his work.

Speaking about spiritual psychology in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century as an independent direction of psychological thought, we meant not only the presence of original concepts or theoretical constructs, but also its organizational design. For example, the existing St. Petersburg Philosophical Society largely promoted the concerns of this direction, although its doors were open to representatives of other approaches. Moreover, the Theological Academies also served as a kind of school within which religious and psychological ideas were tested. Thus, many graduates of academies wrote papers for the degree of candidate or master of theology on psychological topics. For example, at the St. Petersburg Academy in 1894, out of 42 graduates, 10 wrote works on psychological and philosophical issues. Moreover, there was a student psychological society here, the chairman of which was V. Serebrennikov, an extraordinary professor in the psychology department of the academy. More than 70 people participated in its work and held 10-12 meetings a year. The great attention paid to the activities of the society is evidenced by the fact that the rector of the academy attended its meetings. The “useful activity” of the society attracted the attention of even the Most Reverend Bishop and, at the request of Serebrennikov, the society was awarded an archpastoral blessing for its continued existence. The resolution on the document on the activities of the psychological society read: “1903, January 4, Blessed. M.A.” . It should be noted that the clergy actively participated in scientific psychological events themselves. For example, members and guests of the 2nd All-Russian Congress on Pedagogical Psychology were teachers from theological seminaries in Kaluga, St. Petersburg, Tver, and Saratov.

The list of journals publishing works by representatives of spiritual psychology also expanded. In line with spiritual psychology, a number of fruitful ideas and approaches have been developed. Moreover, constant communication at scientific meetings and sessions of the Moscow Psychological Society, the Religious and Philosophical Assembly in St. Petersburg, etc., contributed to their adjustment, clarification, and critical re-evaluation. All this testified to this direction as progressively developing and promising.

However, after the victory of the October Revolution, spiritual psychology in Russia officially ceases to exist. Thus, we can come to the conclusion that psychology in Russia by the beginning of the 20th century. was an intensively developing area scientific knowledge, as evidenced by: the completion of its formalization into an independent scientific discipline, organizational strengthening, the formation of a detailed scientific structure of psychological knowledge, represented by different directions and levels of its development, the increasing authority of psychology in the scientific community and the strengthening of its influence on all aspects of the cultural life of Russian society.

Of course, against the backdrop of such a positive picture, serious difficulties also appeared, which were the flip side of the achievements and successes of psychology in Russia in the 20th century. The intensive development of different approaches to the study of man (alternative in their methodological and theoretical foundations) acted as a manifestation of a natural and normal tendency in the development of knowledge of such a complex and multifaceted subject as mental reality. This made it possible to study psychic phenomena quite fully, covering various sides and aspects, and created favorable ground for scientific discussions. But at the same time, due to the diversity and methodological incompatibility of the movements discussed above, difficulties arose in combining and comparing the psychological facts accumulated in them, which became a serious obstacle to the creation of a unified psychological theory. This was realized by many famous Russian psychologists at the beginning of the 20th century. and stimulated them to find ways to overcome these difficulties.

Life took its own course. In 1917, a socialist revolution took place in Russia. A new stage in the development of Russian psychology, its new history, has begun.

FRANCSemyon Ludvigovich (1877 – 1950) - Russian religious philosopher and psychologist. Professor Saratovsky and Moscow Univ. In 1922, he was expelled along with a large group of philosophers, writers and public figures from Soviet Russia. Until 1937 he lived in Berlin, where he taught at the University of Berlin. Enteredas part of the organized N.A. Berdyaev Religious and Philosophical Academy. Participated in the publication of the magazine “Put”. In 1930, he published the article “Psychoanalysis as a World Outlook,” in which he noted the naturalistic orientations of psychoanalysis and analyzed the difference between the spiritual and the psychic. For many years he was friends and corresponded with the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst L. Binswanger. After the Nazis came to power, he was removed from teaching. In 1937 he emigrated to France, where he survived the Second World War. In 1945 he emigrated to England, lived and worked in London. In their philosophical views supported and developed the idea of ​​unity in the spirit of V.V. Solovyov, tried to reconcile rational thinking with religious faith on the way to overcoming the inconsistency of all things, the imperfect world and building Christian ethics. He saw Russia’s way out of the constant crisis in the implementation of “the ideal of spiritual unity and organic spiritual creativity of the people, the ideal of religious meaningfulness and national-historical validity of social and political culture” (“ De profandis" . - on Sat. "From the depth". M.-Pg., 1918, the circulation of which was completely destroyed and republished only in 1967 by the publishing house " YMCA - Press "). As a psychologist, F.paid great attention to the study of human spiritual activity, arguing that psychology should remain primarily a science about the soul, and not about mental processes ("The Soul of Man", 1918). The main idea of ​​this book is the desire to return the concept of the soul to psychology instead of the concept of mental phenomena, which, from his point of view, do not have independent meaning and therefore cannot be the subject of science. F. believed that psychology should give a person an understanding of the integrity of his personality and the meaning of his life, and this can only be given by the science of the soul. Explaining the condition public consciousness and the crisis of modern society as a crisis of worldview, F. argued that the emergence of psychology without a soul is associated with a person’s loss of interest in himself and the lack of desire to understand the meaning of his existence. Psychology became natural science so easily because scientific, theoretical interest in understanding the essence of the human soul disappeared. This loss of scientific interest in the human soul also explains the development of interest in mysticism. F. believed that the basis of psychology should be philosophy, and not natural science, since it does not study the real processes of objective existence in their causal or other natural patterns, but gives “general logical explanations of the ideal nature and structure of the mental world and its ideal relationship to others objects of existence." Proving the need and opportunity to explore the soul, F. referred to the experience of intuitionism N.O. Lossky. At the same time, by soul he understood “the general generic nature of the world of mental existence, as a qualitatively unique integral unity.” Great importance has the fact that F. in his work distinguished such concepts as mental life, soul and consciousness. In anomalous cases, mental life seems to overflow its banks and flood consciousness; it is in these states that one can give some characterization of mental life as a state of distracted attention, in which objects and vague experiences associated with them are combined. Coming to virtually the same conclusions as psychoanalysis, F. writes that under a thin layer of hardened forms of rational culture smolders the heat of great passions, dark and light, which in the life of an individual and in the life of the people as a whole can break through the dam and come out, destroying everything in its path, leading to aggression, rebellion and anarchy. At the same time, again in unison with psychoanalysis, he proves that in play and in art a person spills out this vague, unconscious mental life and, thereby, complements the narrow circle of conscious experiences. He believed that it is the unconscious that is the main subject of psychological research, and consciousness only enters into its subject insofar as the phenomena of consciousness have a side due to which they are experiences and it is in this part that they are elements of mental life. The main characteristics of mental life, from F.’s point of view, are its formlessness, unity, that is, its non-extension and timelessness. It is therefore quite natural that he opposes associationism and Wundt's theory of sensory mosaic. The theory of knowledge developed by F., as well as his understanding of the essence of the soul, is largely based on the monadology of G. W. Leibniz: pure reason is super-individual and super-personal and therefore knowledge occurs not only and not so much on the basis of contact with the outside world, but developing from within. At its periphery, the soul comes into contact with the objective side of existence and thus becomes the bearer of knowledge about the external world. However, through its internal channels the soul connects with pure reason and is thus filled not with relative concepts, but with pure objective knowledge. Identifying two levels of the soul, F. also wrote that the vague mental life associated with emotions and feelings is, as it were, the lowest level of the soul, which is associated with the body. The body not only makes it possible for the soul to be localized in time and space, but also obscures the content of mental life. However, the soul is independent of the body and its limitations, since it bears the imprint of the highest faith, God. In this regard, true knowledge is always a revelation, since it revives the connection with the whole. Of all the psychologists of the first half of the twentieth century, F. most fully and accurately reflected the influence of religious philosophy (which originates in the position of Solovyov) on psychology. At the same time, his concept fully reflected both the advantages and disadvantages of such a position. F.'s main works: “Philosophy and Life”, St. Petersburg, 1910; “The Subject of Knowledge”, 1915; “Essay on the methodology of social sciences”, M., 1922; "Living Knowledge", Berlin, 1923; “The Crash of Idols”, 1924; “Spiritual Foundations of Society”, 1930; "Unfathomable." Paris, 1939; “Reality and man. Metaphysics of human existence", Paris, 1956; "God is with us", Paris, 1964.

T.D. Martsinkovskaya, V.I. Ovcharenko