The Problem of human identity (self-identity): theology and politics

Abstract

The role of man in cognition is the main question in both philosophy and theology. It is also central in political science and sociology. Beginning with Plato, the problem of cognition has been viewed as a mysterious involvement, a person’s participation in stable, constant knowledge, as an essential aspect of man, an indicator of his health both at the personal and socio-political levels, and even at the biological, physiological level. However, the theme of the integrity of cognition as a unity (of God, man, creation in general, with all its diversity, complexity and multi-component nature) received its most significant and comprehensive development in patristics: in the works of the great Cappadocians, especially St. Gregory of Nyssa, in the writings of St. Maximus the Confessor, in the Areopagite Corpus. It was considered in the 15th century by the Roman cardinal and thinker Nicholas of Cusa. In Russian philosophy the theme of the integrity of knowledge turned out to be especially significant for the Slavophiles, first of all for A. S. Khomyakov, who considered the theme of the unity and intrinsic essence of anything in the context of conciliarity (sobornost’). V. S. Solovyov, the most significant classic of the “metaphysics of all-unity”, understands the way of arranging being as unity – not at the expense of all, or to their detriment, but for the benefit of all. He also described a false, negative unity, suppressing or absorbing the elements included in it, as opposed to true being, preserving and strengthening these elements, being realized in them as the fullness of being.