printSobornost as a Non-Sociological Category
Shmerlina I.A.
Cand. Sci. (Philos.), Leading Researcher, Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS, Moscow, Russia shmerlina@yandex.ru
Shmerlina I.A. Sobornost as a Non-Sociological Category. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2024. No 4. P. 26-36
The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the concept “conciliarity” (“sobornost”) and is motivated by its incorrect, in the author’s opinion, use in modern sociological literature. Having put forward the understanding of sobornost as a transcendent / socially loaded category as the main dilemma, the author gives an ambiguous solution to it. It is shown that the concept of sobornost, the appearance of which in Russian religious philosophy and, more broadly, Russian culture, is traditionally associated with the name of A.S. Khomyakov, is deeply rooted in the religious-mystical experience of the latter and requires careful handling. Sobornost, in its authentic understanding, is the divine grace that descended upon the meeting of believers and mystically transformed it. This concept belongs to the theological picture of the world; bringing it into sociological analysis is incorrect, and its use in socio-political discourse is unwholesome, since it sets false guidelines and values. At the same time, the vulgarization of the notion of “sobornost” present in many works can be explained not only by a superficial and / or tendentious reading, but also by the inherent deep ambivalence of this concept, the obvious gaps between its authentic content and latent mental constructs embedded in it and analytically revealed by a certain research perspective. “Sobornost” was born as a social, in its basic intuitions, category, and in its historical development it returns to these intuitions. The presence of a certain connection between the deeply mystical authentic content of “conciliarity” and its social projections, as well as its subsequent sociologically inevitable secularization, turns the concept under consideration into an extremely curious object of terminological analysis.
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