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The Problem of Time in Karsavin
Abstract
This article examines one of the major problems in the ontology of L. P. Karsavin. It is closely related to his conception of the symphonic personality. Karsavin began to deal with the problem of temporality when he turned his attention to solving problems connected with the methodology of history. He worked on these problems throughout his whole life, beginning with his time in Saint Petersburg (1919) and ending with the works which he wrote while held in a prison camp (1949–1952). Throughout this time, he attempted to delineate grounding principles for a methodology of history. The author of this article analyses the problem of time in an ontological context, examining the specific points of Karsavin’s understanding of the Trinity, the creation of the world, his understanding of Styazhennost’ (Contraction?) as a basic ontological principle, as well as his anthropology. The article further discusses Karsavin’s dialectic of consciousness as well as his theory of symphonic personality. The Article highlights several fundamental problems of Karsavin’s philosophy: the concepts of Sverkhvremmenost’ (PreterTime), universal temporality, as well as Ontic and Empirical Time. The author of the article concludes that Karsavin saw the solution of many of these problems in Neo- Platonic philosophy (the idea of temporal, living eternity), in Saint Augustines’s theory of time as an extension of the soul as well as in Schelling’s concept of world epochs. All this induced Karsavin to define time as the extended reflection of eternity, an extension of contracted (svernutoy) divine eternity.
Keywords
L. P. Karsavin, Universal Time, Ontic and Empirical Time, Consciousness, Symphonic Personality
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