G.P. Fedotov's views on culture and history

G.P. Fedotov was a Russian religious thinker who belonged to the generation that suffered the social disasters of the 20th century. It escalated interest in historiosophy issues. G.P. Fedotov's cognition of philosophy of history and culture was based on Christian historiosophy principles - history was thought as a tragic mystery with a person as a main hero. The tragedy is that we do not know the end of history because of human's freedom - a person can choose between the good and the evil. G.P. Fedotov comprehends freedom as the freedom of body and the freedom of spirit. He focuses on spiritual and moral content of freedom, which is reflected in his narration about the end of history. G.P. Fedotov's vision of history was eschatological - he believed in the fatal end of history and the coming of the Kingdom of God. He shares an opinion about tragic eschatology which is advantageous for cultural creation and which is possible because of resurgence of culture in glory in New Jerusalem that completed the sufferings of the world. Fedotov wrote about the possibility of an optimistic end which is opened by the eschatology of conditional prophecies. He sanctified the cultural-historical creation in the face of the apocalyptic expectations. G.P. Fedotov believed that culture included rational and irrational elements. He focused on the second element, on the spiritual culture which was important for understanding of individuality, world view, value system. He thought that a religion was in the culture foundation. So, Christianity was the foundation of the European culture. The problem of culture and Christianity connection also was the subject of Russian religious thinkers (A.A. Meyer, S.L. Frank, N.A. Berdyaev), as well as Catholic and Protestant thinkers (K. Dawson, P. Tillich). They reflected its urgency for the early 20th century. The cause of the culture crisis in the 20th century Fedotov saw in the breakup with Christianity. Fedotov's thoughts are compared with O. Spengler's and J. Huizinga's views. G.P. Fedotov contemplated contemporary events with optimism. An ability of changing the atmosphere in Europe was based on the belief that culture grew out of religious roots. Therefore the returning of culture to Christianity was considered to be the salvation for the European culture. In general, G.P. Fedotov's cultural and historical views reveal a great interest to find out peculiarities of Russian religious thought of the beginning of the 20th century, its links with European intellectual thought. Moreover, the problems studied in Fedotov's articles are urgent in the early 21st century.

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