Gillespie M. A. The Theological Origins of Modernity. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2008. - 386 pp.

Strictly speaking, the book "The Theological Origins of Modernity" by Michael Gillespie, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Duke University (USA), is not a novelty, since it was published five years ago. However, there are two things that encourage you to turn to it. First, that it deals with the intellectual era, which also includes the "scientific revolution" (the main theme of this issue of our magazine), and secondly, its relevance for the rethinking of secularization and modernity (modernity), which has been actively taking place in the world of science lately (and to which the first and second issues of our magazine were dedicated in 2012). It is significant that the author of one of the responses to Gillespie's book put it on a par with Charles Taylor's study "The Secular Age" (published a year earlier - in 2007), calling it "a great addition" to this fundamental work. Along the way, we note an interesting fact: the Gillespie study under consideration has passed through two editions in Chinese translation (2011, 2012), and this year a Turkish translation is being published.

Gillespie puts it this way: "The origins of modernity [modernity] are not in human self - assertion or reason, but in the great metaphysical and theological struggle that marked the end of the medieval world and transformed Europe in the three centuries that separate the medieval and modern worlds." In his book, he explores " the hidden origins of modernity dating back to those forgotten ages "(p. 12).

The turbulent source of modernity was, in the author's opinion, the crisis of Christian thought itself, which at that time was occupied with the question of the nature of God and, as a consequence, about the nature of being, and the turn of the world around us.-

The nominalist revolution, which was not only an intellectual revolution, but also a revolution in the perception of the world, became the starting point. The ontological realism of medieval scholasticism, according to which the world was experienced as the embodiment of the categories of divine reason, was replaced by a different view, according to which only individual things have true existence, and words are only signs that are useful for human understanding. A new understanding of universals - as fictions-defragmented the world. The nominalist Revolution "put an end to the great efforts initiated by the Church Fathers to unite reason and revelation by combining the natural philosophical and ethical teachings of the Greeks with the Christian concept of an omnipotent Creator" (p.14). Accordingly, man has also lost the quality of a teleological being. Now the human mind can only understand God through divine revelation and mystical experience.

"The God of Aquinas and Dante is infinite, but the glory of His deeds and His undoubted goodness are everywhere manifest. The nominalist god, on the other hand, is terrifyingly omnipotent; He infinitely exceeds human knowledge and is a constant threat to human well-being. Moreover, such a God cannot be grasped in words, and therefore can only be experienced as a colossal question that causes awe and awe "(p. 15). This question, according to the author, is at the origins of modernity.

Gillespie believes that the victory of nominalism, which undermined scholasticism, gave almost all subsequent lines of thought ontological individualism-in the field of metaphysica generalis; at the same time, in the field of metaphysica specialis, variability remained: "The most profound disagreements between the XIV and XVII centuries were not astrological, but ontic, that is, disagreements not about nature Rather, in relation to which of the three spheres of being - human, divine, or natural-is the most important", that is, in relation to the hierarchy of these spheres (p. 16).

The first case of such variability and controversy is the correlation and clash between humanism and the Reformation, which answered the question of whether man or God is ontically primary in different ways. If humanism puts man first and interprets God and nature on this basis, the Reformation, on the contrary, begins with God and considers man in this perspective and at the same time interprets God and nature.-

the family. Modernity, in the current sense, "is a consequence of an attempt to resolve this conflict by asserting the ontic priority not of man or God, but of nature." Descartes and Hobbes are the originators here, but they also get into an argument. "For Descartes, man is partly a natural being, but also partly divine, and therefore distinguished from nature and free from its laws. For Hobbes, man is completely natural and therefore free only in the sense that is compatible with universal natural causality " (p. 17).

From the author's point of view, this dispute became a defining one for modern thought, but it was never resolved, which was reflected in Kant's antinomianism, which marked the crisis of modernity itself. The corresponding attempts of German idealism were also unsuccessful, after which modernity was caught between two extremes: radical voluntarism and radical determinism. Gillespie believes that the main modern contradiction cannot be solved within the framework of modern metaphysics-you need to go back to the origins of modernity and again consider the question of the relationship between reason and revelation.

The book by Michael Gillespie is a detailed historical-theological and historical-philosophical justification of the above logic of the author.

The first chapter is devoted to the nominalist revolution itself as the source of modernity. The main "heroes" of this chapter are Occam, Meister Eckhardt, and Bacon. Petrarch's role in the "invention of individuality" is further discussed in detail, but within the framework of his Christian worldview (chapter d). Petrarch is inherited by the humanists, whose combined efforts lead to the "apotheosis of man", but this again takes place in the context of a particular theology or "philosophy of Christ", as in Erasmus (chapter 3). In this case, the author states: "Humanism in all its forms has adopted a nominalist ontology of radically individual beings. However, in trying to find his way through the chaotic world generated by nominalism, he did not follow the nominalist path at all, since he gave ontic priority to human existence, and not to the divine or natural. From Petrarch onwards, in the thought of Machiavelli and Erasmus, the first and most important thing for man is man" (p. 99-100).

This dominant development changes radically with the appearance on the historical stage of Martin Luther (Chapter 4), for whom, on the contrary, " God is everything, and what is God?"-

lovek is nothing" (p. 128). Luther shares the nominalist view of the omnipotence of God, reinforcing it through the image of the "hidden God", deus absconditus. The author examines in detail the famous Luther - Erasmus argument about free will against the background of the Western tradition of discussing this issue (Chapter 5, "The Contradictions of Premodernity").

Separate chapters are devoted to Descartes and Hobbes (Chapters 6 and 7), with special emphasis on the theological dimension of their thought.

Gillespie offers the following interpretation of Descartes.

"Descartes' understanding of God and his ontological argument for proving the existence of God are based on a new understanding of infinity, radically different from the previous ones and essential for the formation of mathematics, which is the foundation of modern science and the modern world... Since God is infinite, we cannot imagine Him, but we can imagine what it means to have an idea of God. Descartes argues that knowing our own existence includes the idea of God. By this he means that the recognition of oneself in the fundamental principle [cogito ergo sum] is the recognition of one's own limitations, that is, the recognition that I am a finite being. But this is also a recognition of the infinite, that is, of the will itself, and this infinite will is God. We are only the limitation of the infinite, finite images inscribed on an infinite surface, the negation of this infinite whole, that is, God" (p.203).

According to the author's analysis, for Descartes, thinking in its essence is will, and in the act of cogito I am the will of myself, but in the same act of thought I am the will of God as God. "This God I know is not identical with the omnipotent and potentially evil God of nominalism, nor with the hidden (or revealed)One To the God of Luther. This God cannot be a deceiver, because He is not aware of Himself, which means that He is not aware of the difference between himself and me." This " God "is not finite and therefore cannot be aware of himself, since His will has no obstacles and restrictions from what is not it. God cannot distinguish himself from all that exists." That is why He cannot be a deceiver, and therefore Descartes ' universal science is reliable (p. 204).

Descartes thus tames the nominalist God, reducing him to a purely intellectual substance, ultimately identified with the will. "Being infinite, God's will is not directed at anything special; it is causality itself."

Dominion over nature, or over the movement of matter, turns into dominion over God, for God "loses his absolute power and his world, which is increasingly drawn into the domain of the scientific ego" (p. 204).

In turn, Hobbes, according to the author, "laid the foundation for the acceptance of a radically omnipotent God, proclaimed by nominalism, showing how this God can be compatible with the dominion of man over the natural and political world. He proposed a doctrine that, unlike the humanists and Descartes, detracts from the divinity of man and, unlike Luther, detracts from the role that God and religion play in human life. If some see this as another step along the path of secularization begun by Occam and completed by Nietzsche, it was a staggering achievement; but one that has its roots as much in the new theological vision as in science. And unless we pay attention to this theological vision and understand it, we will not be able to understand either modern science or modernity itself " (p. 254).

In the last chapter of the book, the author refers to "the contradictions of the Enlightenment and the crisis of modernity", noting that everything said earlier was intended to show that "modernity is broader, deeper and older than the Enlightenment" (p.257). He focuses on Kant's third antinomy (on freedom and necessity), discussing it in retrospect, in the context of the previous thought - that is, in the context of a naturalistic interpretation of the human and divine. Analyzing in detail the dispute between Descartes and Hobbes as "prototypical modern thinkers", the author notes that it reproduces an earlier dispute between Erasmus and Luther. "Both disputes actually reflect the contradictions that are characteristic of the metaphysical heritage perceived by modernity. To give priority to nature is to distract attention from the question of the primacy of the human or divine, but it does not mean to remove this question. In fact, in this case, this question is hidden in the depths of the naturalistic worldview that science offers" (p.270). Accordingly, according to Gillespie, this raises a different question - about the significance that theology has for our time. To sharpen the point, the author puts this question like this: secularization or concealment? According to the secularization thesis, God does not exist, and religion is simply a human construct. Gillespie suggests

another interpretation: "The apparent rejection or disappearance of religion and theology essentially obscures the continuing relevance of theological issues and corresponding commitment in the modern era" (p. 272).

What really happened in the process of secularization, or Weber's disenchantment of the world identified with modernity? From Gillespie's point of view, this is not the victory of reason over superstition-shame, as in Voltaire ("crush the reptile!"), nor the gradual "death of God" announced by Nietzsche, nor the much earlier retreat of the "hidden God" that Heidegger spoke of. This process is nothing more than " the gradual transfer of divine attributes to human beings (the infinite human will), to the natural world (universal mechanical causality), to social forces (the general will, the invisible hand), and to history (the idea of progress, dialectical development, the cunning of reason)" (p.273). "The' man ' who was discovered by the Enlightenment turned out to be a much higher being than the sinful viator of Christianity or the rational animal of antiquity, "and this" is essentially a form of radical (albeit hidden) Pelagianism " (p.274-275).

The last section of the last chapter is entitled "After the Enlightenment: The Hidden Theology of Late Modernity" and deals with the philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries. The author gives a cursory overview of the positions of this period (mentioning in passing even Russian authors-Chernyshevsky, Pisarev and Bakunin) and approaches the problems of our time, which, apparently, inspired him to study the origins of modernity. Among these problems, Gillespie's primary concern seems to be the active entry of Islam into today's modernity, in the context of globalization. This is evidenced by the" Epilogue " of the book, which, contrary to all expectations that arise when reading such an academic study (and we add: extremely clear and "readable", but at the same time competent and alien to any primitivization-a great positive example of the possibilities of American science), is entirely devoted to Al - Ghazali and Islamic thought...

At the end of the book, we read: "Our characteristic misunderstanding of Islam in the Western world is complicated by our misunderstanding of ourselves. This is especially true for our ignorance of the theological origins of the Bible.-

our own liberalism. Until we understand how our Christian past shaped individualism and humanism as the core of liberalism, we will not understand why, for radical Islam, our liberal world is unholy and immoral. Nor will we understand why our liberal institutions do not conform to the Islamic view of what the order of life in this world should be" (p.293).

Gillespie's book is not only a landmark, but also an important event in the context of the latest research strategies that formally emerged within the framework of "classical" postmodern genealogies, but meaningfully use this approach, so to speak, "against the Nietzscheans". A characteristic parallel is the work of John Milbank (now also "classical" in its own way), which revealed the theological origins of the modern concept of "secular" ("secular ")⁴.

The traditional secular historiography of ideas fundamentally ignores the place and role of Voltaire's "reptile" (no matter how it is understood) - not only in history as such, but above all and primarily in the "history" of modernity itself. For this "modernity" is postulated (and therefore forever understood) as an absolutely new quality-both of the world and of thought. Until recently, this revolutionism of ideologically secular thinking seemed to be "historically eternal"in the Hegelian way. A different view was simply not allowed in the "decent" (that is, dominant) academic space.

Gillespie's book breaks down this unwritten norm, this stereotype. His research, along with other similar ones, helps to overcome the hidden ideologism inherent in postmodern "genealogists" and demonstrates loyalty to the scientific approach itself, which necessarily assumes the presence of a certain author's position, but is fundamentally independent of it.

This removes the tacit ban on any theology, even historical, if it does not reduce religious thought to its supposed secular dimension, which is considered as "fundamental", the only significant one, and fits into secularization as an element of universal progress. A secularist interpretation of history, including historical research.-

^{Milbank J.} 4. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford & Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990 [Russian translation of the first chapter: Milbank D. Political theology and the new Science of Politics //Logo. 2008. N4. pp. 33-54].

today it ceases to be a priori, and therefore dominant. But this does not mean that a different interpretation must necessarily be "religious", that is, ideologized in its own way-in the old, pre - secular manner.

Another way is possible-scientific integrity, which leads to results that open up new facets of seemingly well-known historical processes, while paying attention to the real place and role of theology - both in the past and in the present. This is exactly the path taken by the author of this book, who, in addition to his academic interest, was motivated by his preoccupation with the current religious and social processes; but at the same time, he correctly took his concern beyond the limits of research as such.

This book by Michael Gillespie, which has been beyond the attention of both Russian philosophers and other intellectuals, and, unfortunately, theologians, requires careful reading and serious discussion - within the framework of a post-secular approach to the history of European thought in general and to the ideological dimension of the phenomenon of modernity, in particular. Otherwise, the latest intellectual trends and processes in world science related to the rehabilitation of theology will be in the "blind zone", and sound philosophical and theological research will be replaced either by cheap religious journalism, or by an equally superficial anti-religious interpretation of the modern era. The cultural era in which we continue to live (postmodernism is the late stage of modernity) and which recently demonstrates not only the vitality, but also the importance of theology as not only the source of modernity, but also as a legitimate view of the modern world.

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