OTIUM Travel
MY ONTOLOGY AND THE ONTOLOGY OF THE MODERN WORLD ORDER
Foundations of Holistic Thinking
When — from 4:00 PM Friday, May 2nd to 9:00 PM Sunday, May 4th
Where — Istanbul, Turkey
Lecturer — Pavel Shchelin
Preparation (before the workshop) — answers to questions on the topic “The Black Legend of Byzantium” and writing an essay on a given topic in the genre of historical chronicle.
The program — the workshop consists of lectures, discussions, city tours and visits to the Chora Monastery Museum, the Blachernae Church of the Mother of God, and the Church of St. Sophia.
Please fill out the registration form for the workshop
ANNOTATION:
The main topic of the workshop is the topic of overcoming the phenomenon of the crisis of large historical narratives by the individual and society.
The dominant philosophy of postmodernism today teaches us that the era of large narratives is over and will never return. But it is self-evident that everyone lives in the face of time. But time reveals itself to a person in an amazing way — "What is time? When no one asks me about it, I know it, but when I am asked and asked to explain — I do not know" wrote the Orthodox Saint Augustine of Hippo. One thing is certain, we live in the face of death. We live as people and as languages. And the way this life flows is evidence of the answer of language to the question of eternity. Time and death create a system of ideas about what is possible, what is not and what should be - ethics.
For a person, life outside of his historical myth is equal to life outside of time, that is, non-life. And then absolutely everything becomes permissible and absolutely nothing becomes possible. In order to make decisions in the face of death and have the courage to take responsibility for them, a person vitally needs to know the answer to the question "when" — or "part of what history am I". This knowledge precedes any conceivable amount of information, and surpasses it. The above is not some kind of discovery, on the contrary — for an educated person — a banality. Heraclitus wrote: "A person realizes himself as a person through the good of his own participation in the whole, which goes beyond the limits of his individual being."
Therefore, the path of postmodernism is not just false but radically inhuman and anti-human. But the problem it poses is real — the old grand narratives are dead. What should we do? The answer offered to you at the workshop is in solidarity with the insight of Clive Lewis — “The only salvation from false feelings is true feelings … The hunger for feeling must be satiated with something, and hardening the heart does not help against softening the brain.” The only salvation from the death of false grand historical myths is not the rejection of History, but true myths. And therefore, at our meeting, we will learn to feel for these support stones in our historical tumbleweed using the example of the most slandered and forgotten history — the Orthodox civilization in general and the Byzantine Empire in particular.
In the workshop we will learn:
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To recognize the significance of historical myth in our lives.
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To reason about myths both from a meta-position and as part of them.
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To understand what myth each participant is a part of.
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We will understand the need to “learn again” and “choose again” when interacting with historical narratives that are self-evident to us.
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To communicate with respect combined with fortitude with other people on historiosophical topics.
In the workshop we will learn:
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About the role and place of historical myth in human life
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About the fragility of our usual ideas about such Myths as "West", "East", "Civilization", "Islam".
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About the depth of the Orthodox historical heritage and the responsibility for it of those who consider themselves part of it.
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About time and eternity given to us in images.
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About why the debate about images is the key debate of philosophy and history.
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About the connection between freedom and purpose in the context of historical myth.
And the city of Constantinople, also known as Istanbul, will help us in our journey into history and in overcoming historiosophical laziness. A place where time can be touched with hands, and the sharpness of historical debt wounds the very heart. A place where the past is the future, the future is the past, and the present is a haze between a ray of sun and the gold of a mosaic.
