SILENCE AS ASCETIC EXPERIENCE

Annotation

The phenomenon of silence as a type of ascetic experience is discussed. Ascesis, in a turn, as a species of autocommunication, as a discourse of the self and the capacity to acquire truth. Types of autocommunication can be called confession, psychoanalysis, meditation, self-report, diary, creativity, prayer. The article reconstructs the interrelation of all these types not at the level of formal organization, but at the level of constructive intervention of philosophical reflection. The names of Pythagoras, Philo of Alexandria, rev. George Florovsky, and Sergei Khoruzhy are examples of historical and philosophical references to the concept of silence. The ontological essence of silence is studied with the help of conceptual and categorical apparatus of M. Heidegger. It is demonstrated that openness in Heidegger’s sense should be compensated by ascetic understanding of silence as self-revelation of the self. Besides ecstaticism, then, the origin of properly organized autocommunication should be recognized as the silent and silence- determined reorganization of the preconditions of ecstatic experience in silence as a productive expression of any subjectivity, and not only individual preconditions of existential experience.

Keywords

autocommunication, asceticism, silence, utterance, Hesychast tradition, truth, feat, speech, contemplation.

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