Background
Zenkovsky, Vasilii Vasil’evich was born on July 4, 1881 in Proskurov, Russia.
Zenkovsky, Vasilii Vasil’evich was born on July 4, 1881 in Proskurov, Russia.
Kiev University.
1915 19, Professor of Psychology, University of Kiev. 1920-1923, Professor of Theology and Philosophy, University of Belgrade. 1923-1926, Director, Institute of Pedagogy, Prague.
1926 62, Professor of Philosophy, Russian Orthodox Institute, Paris. 1942, ordained to the Russian Orthodox priesthood.
In his principal philosophical writings Zenkovsky developed a Christian metaphysics that incorporates aspects of Sergei Bulgakov’s doctrine of Sophia. He devoted special attention to the nature of the human soul, the character and justification of religious experience and the relation between God and the created world. According to Zenkovsky, at the pinnacle of the soul’s hierarchical structure is the capacity to make contact with a reality that transcends the subject. At one level this reality may present itself in mystical experience as an ineffable allembracing unity; the person who searches no deeper may espouse pantheism. Beyond that limited form of contact with the divine, however—which is actually contact with 'passive Sophia’, or the created aspect of the world—is the possibility of knowing a personal Divine Being through revelation; this is the higher, theistic form of religious experience, or contact with the Divine Sophia—God himself. Zenkovsky’s doctrine of creation includes the controversial thesis that time exists in God, rather than beginning in the created world - a thesis he believes is necessary in order to answer the question of what existed before created time. Zenkovsky’s religious philosophy was influential chiefly within Russian émigré and Eastern Orthodox Christian communities, but he achieved broader renown for his authoritative two-volume history of Russian philosophy. The work helped to keep non-Marxist Russian philosophical traditions alive even in the Soviet Union, where a limited edition for circulation among approved scholars was issued in 1956.