THEOLOGIAN OLEKSANDR FILONENKO: on the culture of presence, the «grafting» of the mind, and the deafness of postmodernism
Оleksandr Filonenko / Photo from personal archive
SHORT PROFILE
Name: Oleksandr Semenovych Filonenko
Date of Birth: 18 October 1968
Profession: Ukrainian Orthodox theologian, public intellectual, Doctor of Philosophy
In the 21st century, the great texts of world culture live and resonate in new ways, breaking through the «deafness» of postmodernism. Oleksandr Filonenko believes that today is the time for a new language of culture and practices of «new reading». In another exclusive interview for our almanac, the renowned Ukrainian theologian will explain why Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe cannot be read alone.
CULTURE OF MEANING AND CULTURE OF PRESENCE
I
n 2004, a small but very important book was published — Production of Presence. It was written by Stanford University professor Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. In it, he criticizes hermeneutics and all practices of interpretation. According to Gumbrecht, European humanities have followed the path of a «culture of meaning» — making interpretation of the text their central focus.
However, contemporary culture is a culture of presence, not meaning. We live in the presence of reality, which constantly breaks into our lives and culture. And we must not hide behind interpretations, but give a full response to these intrusions. Therefore, the humanities should deal not only with the effects of meanings, but with the relations of presence and meaning. In other words, with the relations between the event and the text.
Of course, Gumbrecht’s idea had its predecessors. In her famous essay Against Interpretation, first published in 1966, Susan Sontag argued that in the modern world, hermeneutics should be replaced by the erotics of art. Because our relationship with art is more important than its understanding. Art has the capacity to evoke the desire for action, not only the desire for understanding. And this requires a different mode of expression than the language of interpretive practices, whose possibilities are very limited.
WHO «INVENTED» THE DANTE WE KNOW?
In this sense, if a text requires interpretation at all, then it must be of a completely different kind. And if one were to attempt such an experiment, Dante would be the perfect example. His Divine Comedy is one of the central texts of European and world culture.
When I first became interested in him, I was far removed from professional Dante studies. But I was fortunate to meet Franco Nembrini in Italy — a great connoisseur of Dante and his work. Around Dante’s figure, Franco also developed a wide-ranging pedagogical practice. He showed me how every era reads this great writer in its own way. And Dante returns to the modern world, but in a completely different form! For me, an important curiosity arose here — one that took place at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries.
At that time, German Romantics, engaged in their eternal dispute with French classicism, sought to assert their intellectual autonomy. To their aid, they called upon two allies — Dante and Shakespeare. In their view, these giants best confirmed the truth of the Romantic position. It was, in fact, the Germans who gifted the world with the images of Dante and Shakespeare as universal geniuses — not merely Italian and British ones.
GRAFTING THE MIND
It is thanks to the interpretations of the German Romantics that today people all over the world read primarily Dante’s Inferno. There is much less interest in the Purgatorio. And almost no one, except religious fanatics, reads the Paradiso. The very scheme of sequential reading (Inferno — Purgatorio — Paradiso) is also their invention. It was with this Dante that the 20th century came to know him. And in that century, serious changes began to take place: every great European poet considered it their duty to read him in their own way…
In the modern world, however, Dante comes from a completely different dimension — our encounter with him begins in the Paradiso! And this may be a more adequate representation of Dante, since he himself had this idea: culture is nothing other than the «grafting of the mind» — this is how the neologism he coined is translated from Italian. By it, he meant the necessity for the human mind to connect its everyday experience with the experience of paradise. For me, «grafting» perfectly describes the vector of contemporary thought and culture. Importantly, Dante urges us to graft specifically the mind — not the heart, not the soul, not the feeling. In this sense, he is entirely rational.
For Ukrainians, this experience is uniquely relevant, especially in times of war. In recent years, we have organized more than 50 groups — hundreds of adults, living in very different circumstances, have begun reading Dante together with us. I myself felt a certain shock when I discovered Dante as an inexhaustible source from which modern humanity can draw endlessly.
THE DEAFNESS OF POSTMODERNISM AND «NEW READING»
Postmodernism is an extremely «lonely» era, inhabited by atomized individuals who understand each other very little. They highly value their own deafness. There is a film called The Land of the Deaf — for me, it is a very precise metaphor of postmodernism, where atomized people defend their right to solitude and deafness. It is clear that this era is already coming to an end, but what will replace it? Today, a new cultural sensitivity is searching for a new «social glue» that must form a new «connectedness».
Reading Dante is an excellent stimulus for such a search. We deliberately read Dante in large groups, around 30 people. Because the habit of solitary reading is a modernist skill. The fundamental cultural texts are meant to be read collectively. The great texts of European culture cannot be read alone. Of course, there are people who can enjoy reading Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe on their own. But all of them are most likely narrow specialists teaching in philology departments.
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