The Byzantine History of the Platonic Dialogue and Its Reception in Russia in the 18th and 19th Centuries

The article examines the interconnectedness of Platonic dialogue traditions in Byzantium and in Russian eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophy. A comparison is made on the basis of dialogues on the immortality of the soul traced back to Plato's Phaedo. The Russian sources on the topic are works by Andrey Bolotov and Mikhail Shcherbatov. Dialogues of Gregory of Nyssa, Aeneas of Gaza, Methodius of Olympus, Ignatios the Deacon, Eustratius of Nicaea, and Eustathius of Thessalonica serve as the main Byzantine sources in this context. The authors' analysis of the sources offers a discussion about the following characteristic features: (1) Platonic dialogues of the Eastern Christian Greek tradition are written more in the Christian dogmatism style than in the Platonic maieutic way or an ironic dialectical mood. (2) Bolotov's and Shcherbatov's works show the same tendency. They present the problem of the immortality of the soul in the Christian manner: as a moralistic exhortation from a person who possesses the truth to another one who acquires it. (3) Of special interest is Shcherbatov's dialogue "A Conversation on the Immortality of the Soul". Shcherbatov considers the problem of the human being first of all as a social one, and the question of the immortality of the soul cannot be separated from the concepts of law and retribution. Besides, the relation between God and the human being is mediated by society. Here one can see a certain similarity in the understanding of interconnections between the human being, law, society, and God between Russian philosophy and the Byzantine philosophical theological tradition. On the basis of the aforementioned points, the authors make the following conclusions: (1) The interest in the Platonic dialogue tradition and in ancient philosophy in general both in Byzantium in the 4th-12th cc. and in the Russian philosophy of the 13th-19th cc. results from the influence of the mutual Eastern Christian heritage. In the Russian case, it is supplemented by the influence of the European Enlightenment philosophy. Turning to Plato for authors of these epochs is a way to reconcile philosophy and Christianity and to formulate the main Christian ideas using the language of ancient philosophy. (2) The Platonic dialogue tradition in Russia has some traits similar to the corresponding tradition in Byzantine Platonism. Inserted into the context of the Christian doctrine, Platonic dialogue transforms itself both in its content and in its form. (3) Reference to social and anthropological contexts in Russian Platonic dialogues and to theological and anthropological contexts in Byzantine Platonic dialogues could be interpreted as a characteristic feature of the Eastern Christian philosophical tradition.

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