S. L. Frank: The dialectic of sobornost

The concept of sobornost in the philosophy of S.L. Frank is considered on the basis of a dialectical approach. Sobornost is revealed in the “dialectic of inseparable-unmerged” bi-unity, the divine-humanity of a man in social reality from abstract forms to its concrete expression, each stage reached qualitatively or categorically changes our being, making up for our potentiality with partial relevance. In its ontological meaning, sobornost is integral, united, and its separation is associated with the personality, through whose activity various forms of sobornost are actualized. In the religious sociality distinguished by the authors, there is an existential form of sobornost, and in secular sociality, the essential form of sobornost is traced, in religious-secular sociality we can speak of the conceptual form of sobornost. An isolated individual, according to Frank, is an abstraction; a person is truly real only in “conciliar being”. Each level of disclosure of sobornost corresponds to a type of personality and activity. The formation of personality occurs not under the infl uence of personal subjective needs, but in the demand for the trans-subjective reality of God. A man is related to this reality in his “spontaneity” or freedom. The community has its origin in the sobornost, and the social ideal, which has religious grounds, must be fundamentally realizable, that is, we not only need to know moral principles, we must implement them, moving away from the meaning of the moral ideal as an abstract concept and moving on to the will of a man, the activity of a personality, which actualizes it.