Russian Religious Philosophy

Born of debates between Westernizers and Slavophiles, Russia's astounding religious-philosophical flowering ran parallel to that in literature, and lived on in Europe and North America in the wake of the Revolution. These thinkers confronted modernity in ways that were both radically innovative, yet firmly grounded in the centuries-old traditions of Eastern Orthodox theology. Topics to be discussed include: personhood, freedom, and evil; iconography and artistic creativity; the transformative power of love; tensions between knowledge and faith; and ethics in a universe in which every person and event is "once-occurrent."