Arkadi Choufrine | Princeton University (original) (raw)

Papers by Arkadi Choufrine

Research paper thumbnail of On Eriugena’s Appropriation of the Neoplatonic Concept of Self-Movement

Библия и христианская древность, 2023

A brief overview of the history of the concept of self-movement is given, beginning with Plato. F... more A brief overview of the history of the concept of self-movement is given, beginning with Plato. For him, the soul possesses self-movement by its very nature. Aristotle demonstrates that the first cause of movement (be it the soul or the mind) must, as such, necessarily be unmoved. To meet Aristotle's challenge, Proclus and Priscianus construe self-movement not as the movement of a pre-existing “self” (or, spiritual substance) but, rather, as the self’s constitution: the soul is the very act of self-reversal. According to Dionysius the Areopagite, the First Cause is not only the object of the creatures’ desire but, also, is Itself moved by Its love to them. The act of unification of the Divine is prior to Its self-movement; therefore, self-movement in Dionysius does not constitute the “Self” of the Divine but is either a self-reversion (for the Divine) or a self-determination (for the humans). Dionysius does not attribute self-movement to the angels. In Eriugena’s (mis-) translation of Dionysius, however, self-movement is attributed, also, to the angels and an element of inanimate nature — fire. The article demonstrates that despite this seemingly invalid application to creatures of the property belonging to God alone, the move made by Eriugena is, in an eschatological perspective, quite justified.

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Research paper thumbnail of NEW WORLD AND "THE FLIGHT"

notes for the presentation delivered at the Russian-American Club of Princeton on February ‎16, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of ЭЕСТАТИЧЕСКИЕ СИСТЕМЫ И ГЕРМЕНЕВТИКА

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Research paper thumbnail of The Preface to the Translation of a Typescript of Martin Heidegger’s Talk “Being-There and Being-True According to Aristotle”

HORIZON / Fenomenologicheskie issledovanija/ STUDIEN ZUR PHÄNOMENOLOGIE / STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY / ÉTUDES PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIQUES

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Research paper thumbnail of КЛИМЕНТ АЛЕКСАНДРИЙСКИЙ И ЯВЛЕНИЕ ХРИСТИАНСКОЙ СУБЪЕКТНОСТИ

БИБЛИЯ И ХРИСТИАНСКАЯ ДРЕВНОСТЬ, 2019

Clement of Alexandria: The Emergence of Christian Subjectivity Abstract. The article traces back... more Clement of Alexandria: The Emergence of Christian Subjectivity
Abstract. The article traces back to Clement of Alexandria the first emergence of the understanding of freedom as the ground of human subjectivity in Christian thought. Up to Irenaeus, Christian understanding of freedom remained within the framework of the Middle Eastern mentality as exemplified by the Biblical story of the Ancestors’ disobedience, where freedom is pedagogically presented as one’s ability to choose between good and evil. With Clement of Alexandria, Christian thought first appropriates the Greek philosophical understanding of human nature, according to which one is in principle unable to choose whatever does not appear to one as good for him or her. Correlatively to this understanding of human nature as inherently «selfish», human freedom is understood as pursuing one’s true good (as distinguished from a merely apparent one): to be free is to truly serve oneself. Thus freedom already implies a self-relation, which is constitutive of the «subject» (or «I») in our modern sense. Michel Foucault had brought attention to self-forming ascetic practices developed in Late Antiquity within the framework of philosophy understood as a «way of life» (rather than a mere theorizing). In Middle Platonism, such practices aimed at purifying one’s mind so as to enable it to see one’s true good in one’s assimilation to God as much as possible. For Clement, one’s deification cannot be achieved by just one’s own efforts but is a work of God relating to Himself through a Christian in whom He dwells, along the lines of Paul’s words: «It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me». This theocentric understanding of human subjectivity was then further developed in Byzantine patristic tradition, resulting, in particular, in Maxim the Confessor’s famous formula «One energy of God and the saints».

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Research paper thumbnail of ВЫЗОВ ХАЙДЕГГЕРА

This introduction to a translated part of Heidegger's article "The Concept of Time" (1924) touch... more This introduction to a translated part of Heidegger's article "The Concept of Time" (1924) touches upon his confrontation with physics over the topic of time, his phenomenology of the pro-ject vs. Husserl's phenomenology of the sub-ject, his early idea of philosophy as pre-theoretical science, and his understanding of event vs. process in his KNS course of 1919.

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Research paper thumbnail of НАУКА О ЕДИНИЧНОМ: от византийской “ипостаси” к Dasein Хайдеггера

THE NATURAL SCIENCE HORIZONS: OF THE EASTERN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES , 2015

An important landmark in the search for the singular in the European intellectual tradition was D... more An important landmark in the search for the singular in the European intellectual tradition was Duns Scotus’ (+1308) introducing the term haecceitas (the form of individuality, “thisness”). As plausibly claimed by Theodore Kisiel, it is from the Scotian haecceitas that Martin Heidegger (who wrote on Scotus his Habilitationsschrift [1915]) got “the very first impulse” toward the articulation of the “primal reality of factic life experience,” to be then refurbished as Dasein. Perhaps not incidentally, on the other hand, a Modern Greek translation renders as ‘hypostasis’ the term ‘existence’ as used by Heidegger of Dasein. This paper attempts to show how the notion of ‘hypostasis’, as it emerged in the 4th century Orthodox theology, may be, indeed, viewed as an answer to a question which was articulated then only superficially but, if pursued deeper, might lead to the historically attested ideas of the person as self-consciousness and, further, Heidegger’s ‘Dasein’. The emergence of the concept of hypostasis thus is viewed as a step, albeit unrecognized as such, in the search for the singularity of the singular.
The paper proceeds by considering four approaches to construing singularity, selected as case studies from the widely understood “Greek” intellectual tradition: pre-Christian, Byzantine, and post-Christian:
1. Naturalistic: singularity as a concurrence of peculiarities (Porphyry).
2. Descriptive: singularity as the referent of an indication by means of a set of external characterizations (Basil the Great).
3. Existential-teleological: singularity as eternally pre-existing “logos” of God’s forethought (Maximus the Confessor).
4. Existential-phenomenological: singularity as one’s fate appropriated in its dynamic quality of an event (Martin Heidegger).
The first three approaches are shown to be question-begging. Those approaches having been rejected, the fourth one rejects staticity as a constitutive trait of singularity.

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Research paper thumbnail of Review Article: Anthony Kaldellis, Niketas Siniossoglou (eds.) The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, 791 pp. // Scrinium. v. 1. 2018. p. 475-507.

This review article is a collective work of five scholars who have written their reviews and/or r... more This review article is a collective work of five scholars who have written their reviews and/or responses to the twelve chapters of the recently published Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium. These reviews discuss such issues as institutional settings, classical scholarship, rhetoric, political theory, literary criticism, historiography, logic, and
philosophy in Byzantium. They also deal with the reception of the Neoplatonic ideas in Byzantium as well as with some individual figures such as Maximos the Confessor and Michael Psellos.

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Research paper thumbnail of Gnosis, Theophany, Theosis: Studies in Clement of Alexandria's Appropriation of His Background. By Arkadi Choufrine. Patristic Studies 5. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. x + 230 pp. $55.95 cloth

Church History, 2003

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Books by Arkadi Choufrine

Research paper thumbnail of Беневич Г.И., Шуфрин А.М. Беседы о православном догматическом богословии. Grigory Benevich & Arkadi Choufrine. Problem Issues in Eastern Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. – St. Petersburg: SRPh, 2004.

В открытой диалогической форме в книге обсуждаются ключевые понятия святоотеческого догматическог... more В открытой диалогической форме в книге обсуждаются ключевые понятия святоотеческого догматического богословия: ипостась, природа, энергия, воипостасирование, «tantum-quantum». В центре книги православное учение об обожении и те трудности, которые оно представляет для современного секулярного, а также либерального и консервативного церковного сознания.
Книга адресована всем, кто интересуется учением святых отцов, его догматическим содержанием и смысловой направленностью.

Written in the form of an open dialogue, the book introduces the key concepts of Byzantine theology: hypostasis, nature, energy, enhypostasis, «tantum-quantum.» The authors focus on the Eastern Orthodox dogma of theosis, viewed in the context of the challenges posed by today’s secular humanism, as well as ecclesiastical liberalism and conservatism.
This book is a resource for anyone who investigates the dogmatic contents of patristic teaching and its message for our time.

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Drafts by Arkadi Choufrine

Research paper thumbnail of ключ к стихотворению Мандельштама "Нашедший подкову"

В статье ставится вопрос: как относится "нахождение подковы"— этот ключевой, судя по названию сти... more В статье ставится вопрос: как относится "нахождение подковы"— этот ключевой, судя по названию стиха, элемент его смысловой структуры—к ней как смысловому целому.
У меня есть догадка на этот счёт, и я готов—в "герменевтическом круге"—показать, как выстраивается смысловое целое стиха, если принять эту догадку в качестве гипотезы.

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Research paper thumbnail of NEW WORLD AND "THE FLIGHT"

notes for a presentation delivered at the Russian-American Club of Princeton on February ‎16, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of ЭКСТАТИЧЕСКИЕ СИСТЕМЫ И ГЕРМЕНЕВТИКА

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Research paper thumbnail of ФИЛОСОФИЯ: ОСНОВАНИЕ, ПРЕДМЕТ, МЕТОД

This short essay, found in my archive, was written in 1989. It is an attempt to grasp the "essenc... more This short essay, found in my archive, was written in 1989. It is an attempt to grasp the "essence" of philosophy.

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Research paper thumbnail of On Eriugena’s Appropriation of the Neoplatonic Concept of Self-Movement

Библия и христианская древность, 2023

A brief overview of the history of the concept of self-movement is given, beginning with Plato. F... more A brief overview of the history of the concept of self-movement is given, beginning with Plato. For him, the soul possesses self-movement by its very nature. Aristotle demonstrates that the first cause of movement (be it the soul or the mind) must, as such, necessarily be unmoved. To meet Aristotle's challenge, Proclus and Priscianus construe self-movement not as the movement of a pre-existing “self” (or, spiritual substance) but, rather, as the self’s constitution: the soul is the very act of self-reversal. According to Dionysius the Areopagite, the First Cause is not only the object of the creatures’ desire but, also, is Itself moved by Its love to them. The act of unification of the Divine is prior to Its self-movement; therefore, self-movement in Dionysius does not constitute the “Self” of the Divine but is either a self-reversion (for the Divine) or a self-determination (for the humans). Dionysius does not attribute self-movement to the angels. In Eriugena’s (mis-) translation of Dionysius, however, self-movement is attributed, also, to the angels and an element of inanimate nature — fire. The article demonstrates that despite this seemingly invalid application to creatures of the property belonging to God alone, the move made by Eriugena is, in an eschatological perspective, quite justified.

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Research paper thumbnail of NEW WORLD AND "THE FLIGHT"

notes for the presentation delivered at the Russian-American Club of Princeton on February ‎16, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of ЭЕСТАТИЧЕСКИЕ СИСТЕМЫ И ГЕРМЕНЕВТИКА

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Research paper thumbnail of The Preface to the Translation of a Typescript of Martin Heidegger’s Talk “Being-There and Being-True According to Aristotle”

HORIZON / Fenomenologicheskie issledovanija/ STUDIEN ZUR PHÄNOMENOLOGIE / STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY / ÉTUDES PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIQUES

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Research paper thumbnail of КЛИМЕНТ АЛЕКСАНДРИЙСКИЙ И ЯВЛЕНИЕ ХРИСТИАНСКОЙ СУБЪЕКТНОСТИ

БИБЛИЯ И ХРИСТИАНСКАЯ ДРЕВНОСТЬ, 2019

Clement of Alexandria: The Emergence of Christian Subjectivity Abstract. The article traces back... more Clement of Alexandria: The Emergence of Christian Subjectivity
Abstract. The article traces back to Clement of Alexandria the first emergence of the understanding of freedom as the ground of human subjectivity in Christian thought. Up to Irenaeus, Christian understanding of freedom remained within the framework of the Middle Eastern mentality as exemplified by the Biblical story of the Ancestors’ disobedience, where freedom is pedagogically presented as one’s ability to choose between good and evil. With Clement of Alexandria, Christian thought first appropriates the Greek philosophical understanding of human nature, according to which one is in principle unable to choose whatever does not appear to one as good for him or her. Correlatively to this understanding of human nature as inherently «selfish», human freedom is understood as pursuing one’s true good (as distinguished from a merely apparent one): to be free is to truly serve oneself. Thus freedom already implies a self-relation, which is constitutive of the «subject» (or «I») in our modern sense. Michel Foucault had brought attention to self-forming ascetic practices developed in Late Antiquity within the framework of philosophy understood as a «way of life» (rather than a mere theorizing). In Middle Platonism, such practices aimed at purifying one’s mind so as to enable it to see one’s true good in one’s assimilation to God as much as possible. For Clement, one’s deification cannot be achieved by just one’s own efforts but is a work of God relating to Himself through a Christian in whom He dwells, along the lines of Paul’s words: «It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me». This theocentric understanding of human subjectivity was then further developed in Byzantine patristic tradition, resulting, in particular, in Maxim the Confessor’s famous formula «One energy of God and the saints».

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Research paper thumbnail of ВЫЗОВ ХАЙДЕГГЕРА

This introduction to a translated part of Heidegger's article "The Concept of Time" (1924) touch... more This introduction to a translated part of Heidegger's article "The Concept of Time" (1924) touches upon his confrontation with physics over the topic of time, his phenomenology of the pro-ject vs. Husserl's phenomenology of the sub-ject, his early idea of philosophy as pre-theoretical science, and his understanding of event vs. process in his KNS course of 1919.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of НАУКА О ЕДИНИЧНОМ: от византийской “ипостаси” к Dasein Хайдеггера

THE NATURAL SCIENCE HORIZONS: OF THE EASTERN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES , 2015

An important landmark in the search for the singular in the European intellectual tradition was D... more An important landmark in the search for the singular in the European intellectual tradition was Duns Scotus’ (+1308) introducing the term haecceitas (the form of individuality, “thisness”). As plausibly claimed by Theodore Kisiel, it is from the Scotian haecceitas that Martin Heidegger (who wrote on Scotus his Habilitationsschrift [1915]) got “the very first impulse” toward the articulation of the “primal reality of factic life experience,” to be then refurbished as Dasein. Perhaps not incidentally, on the other hand, a Modern Greek translation renders as ‘hypostasis’ the term ‘existence’ as used by Heidegger of Dasein. This paper attempts to show how the notion of ‘hypostasis’, as it emerged in the 4th century Orthodox theology, may be, indeed, viewed as an answer to a question which was articulated then only superficially but, if pursued deeper, might lead to the historically attested ideas of the person as self-consciousness and, further, Heidegger’s ‘Dasein’. The emergence of the concept of hypostasis thus is viewed as a step, albeit unrecognized as such, in the search for the singularity of the singular.
The paper proceeds by considering four approaches to construing singularity, selected as case studies from the widely understood “Greek” intellectual tradition: pre-Christian, Byzantine, and post-Christian:
1. Naturalistic: singularity as a concurrence of peculiarities (Porphyry).
2. Descriptive: singularity as the referent of an indication by means of a set of external characterizations (Basil the Great).
3. Existential-teleological: singularity as eternally pre-existing “logos” of God’s forethought (Maximus the Confessor).
4. Existential-phenomenological: singularity as one’s fate appropriated in its dynamic quality of an event (Martin Heidegger).
The first three approaches are shown to be question-begging. Those approaches having been rejected, the fourth one rejects staticity as a constitutive trait of singularity.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Review Article: Anthony Kaldellis, Niketas Siniossoglou (eds.) The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, 791 pp. // Scrinium. v. 1. 2018. p. 475-507.

This review article is a collective work of five scholars who have written their reviews and/or r... more This review article is a collective work of five scholars who have written their reviews and/or responses to the twelve chapters of the recently published Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium. These reviews discuss such issues as institutional settings, classical scholarship, rhetoric, political theory, literary criticism, historiography, logic, and
philosophy in Byzantium. They also deal with the reception of the Neoplatonic ideas in Byzantium as well as with some individual figures such as Maximos the Confessor and Michael Psellos.

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Research paper thumbnail of Gnosis, Theophany, Theosis: Studies in Clement of Alexandria's Appropriation of His Background. By Arkadi Choufrine. Patristic Studies 5. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. x + 230 pp. $55.95 cloth

Church History, 2003

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Research paper thumbnail of Беневич Г.И., Шуфрин А.М. Беседы о православном догматическом богословии. Grigory Benevich & Arkadi Choufrine. Problem Issues in Eastern Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. – St. Petersburg: SRPh, 2004.

В открытой диалогической форме в книге обсуждаются ключевые понятия святоотеческого догматическог... more В открытой диалогической форме в книге обсуждаются ключевые понятия святоотеческого догматического богословия: ипостась, природа, энергия, воипостасирование, «tantum-quantum». В центре книги православное учение об обожении и те трудности, которые оно представляет для современного секулярного, а также либерального и консервативного церковного сознания.
Книга адресована всем, кто интересуется учением святых отцов, его догматическим содержанием и смысловой направленностью.

Written in the form of an open dialogue, the book introduces the key concepts of Byzantine theology: hypostasis, nature, energy, enhypostasis, «tantum-quantum.» The authors focus on the Eastern Orthodox dogma of theosis, viewed in the context of the challenges posed by today’s secular humanism, as well as ecclesiastical liberalism and conservatism.
This book is a resource for anyone who investigates the dogmatic contents of patristic teaching and its message for our time.

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Research paper thumbnail of ключ к стихотворению Мандельштама "Нашедший подкову"

В статье ставится вопрос: как относится "нахождение подковы"— этот ключевой, судя по названию сти... more В статье ставится вопрос: как относится "нахождение подковы"— этот ключевой, судя по названию стиха, элемент его смысловой структуры—к ней как смысловому целому.
У меня есть догадка на этот счёт, и я готов—в "герменевтическом круге"—показать, как выстраивается смысловое целое стиха, если принять эту догадку в качестве гипотезы.

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Research paper thumbnail of NEW WORLD AND "THE FLIGHT"

notes for a presentation delivered at the Russian-American Club of Princeton on February ‎16, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of ЭКСТАТИЧЕСКИЕ СИСТЕМЫ И ГЕРМЕНЕВТИКА

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Research paper thumbnail of ФИЛОСОФИЯ: ОСНОВАНИЕ, ПРЕДМЕТ, МЕТОД

This short essay, found in my archive, was written in 1989. It is an attempt to grasp the "essenc... more This short essay, found in my archive, was written in 1989. It is an attempt to grasp the "essence" of philosophy.

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