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The discovery and reconstruction of Georges Florovsky’s dissertation “Alexander Herzen’s philosophy of history”
Abstract
The complete text of Georges Florovsky’s thesis, “Herzen’s Philosophy of History” is considered lost. The main goal of the present study is to discuss the discovery of this work in the archive of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (Crestwood, NY). Using the methods of redaction and source criticism, Paul Gavrilyuk off ers a reconstruction of all parts of the dissertation, based on the newly discovered document and previously published materials. The paper covers the following topics: (1) how Florovsky wrote his dissertation; (2) the defense of the dissertation in Prague; (3) the preparation of the dissertation for publication; (4) the description of the newly discovered material; (5) the reconstruction of the dissertation. Section two contains a hitherto unknown account of Florovsky’s dissertation defense by Alexander S. Izgoev.
Keywords
G. Florovsky, A. Herzen, russian diaspora, philosophy of history
References
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