Dialogue as a form of religious historical reflection: the work of fr. A. Men'

This work focuses on the features of the religious historical consciousness of fr. Aleksandr Men'. The bright, exceptional thinker and preacher, conceived large-scale general works on the history of religion, being the first amongst many other religious thinkers - from V. Solovyov to A. Elchaninov - to complete such work. His work "The History of Religions", published in several volumes, is already a fundamental text and contains ideas and interpretations which are beyond historical studies in a positivistic understanding. At the same time, fr. Aleksandr's dialogical style and his methodology allow him draw conclusions about other cultures without incurring in the subjectivity of a Christian thinker's look. This article's aim is to analyse A. Men's dialogical research model and its principles. The analysis of fr. Aleksandr's methodological approaches is carried out mainly according to his teхts of "The History of Religions". This work's research tasks are firstly clarification of fr. Aleksandr's understanding of notion "dialogue"; secondly one is comparison this understanding with understanding humanities knowledge's of that time. Next one is consideration of self-consistent of application fr. Aleksandr's "dialogue methodology", and revealing of its borders. The work is revealed the fr. Aleksandr's ideas of dialogue understanding, which are similar to M. Buber's and M.M. Bakhtin's ideas. All of them see dialogue as a means to learning. Dialogical understanding is seen as the way in which knowledge and ideas exist, A. Men' develops this thought further, seeing dialogue as the mean for the existence of people. In "The History of Religions" A. Men' entertains a peculiar dialogue with thinkers and cultures of the past, and his achievements approach modern research strategies. Fr. Alexander's approach leads him to a comparative-historical research. However, problems of methodology, the research of the most relevant interpretations rise before the scholar of religious studies whether he is part of the culture in analysis of other religious culture, or he does not belong to any religious culture. It should be pointed out, that any understanding position of the researcher studying religion may influence his perception and his interpretation limits. As well as any method, the dialogue has its limits. The perception of existence method's limits are fundamental traits supporting the development of opportunities of application for the dialogue methodology in historical research.

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