Metropolitan Filaret’s Theory in the context of “Russkoe Khranitelstvo”

Annotation

Metropolitan Filaret’s socio-political views are of particular importance in the history of Russian socio-political thought. Metropolitan Filaret’s teaching on the state and power developed in the spiritual and political mainstream of “Russkoe Hranitelstvo” as a specific phenomenon of Russian intellectual thought. An analysis of Metropolitan Filaret's writings suggests that he developed an original creative method based on philological and theological synthesis, which can be defined as a spiritual and political synthesis. A comparison of Metropolitan Filaret's spiritual and political method with the method of legal political theology, as well as Metropolitan Filaret’s concept of two kingdoms with St. Augustine’s teaching of civitas Dei and civitas terrena, shows that Metropolitan Filaret's spiritual and political teaching is an immanent continuation of the theological theories of the origin of authorities and power and demonstrates the universalism of his ideas. The formation of Metropolitan Filaret's spiritual and political teaching was not an accidental coincidence, it was formed in the context and in accordance with the logic of the socio-political development of the conservativno-hranitelskoe line of Russian thought. The author substantiates the conclusion that the spiritual and political approach to Metropolitan Filaret's teaching allows us to identify its boundaries and the relationship between spiritual and political content in a specific cultural and historical context, to determine its place and role in the history of “Russkoe Hranitelstvo”, and to compare it with other theories and concepts.

Keywords

• Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov)
• spiritual and political thought
• Russian guardianship
• Russian conservatism
• political theology
• spiritual and moral values
• essays
• power
• theory of the origin of the state
• monarchy
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References

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