The heart in Byzantine philosophy and culture: the Hesychasm of Gregory Palamas

Abstract

The article provides a philosophical-anthropological and cultural-philosophical analysis of the doctrine of the heart in Byzantine Hesychasm based on the works of Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), drawing on contemporary studies of the liturgical reform and the antinomic method. The aim of the work is to explicate the ontological and anthropological status of the category “heart” in the Palamite tradition and to demonstrate its role in shaping the Eastern Christian civilizational matrix. The article defines the place of the category “heart” in the patristic tradition, reveals its connection with the practice of “leading the mind into the heart” and its role in the formation of the “liturgical person”. The hesychast understanding of the heart as the center of the spiritual, psychic and bodily life of a person is contrasted with the Western “metaphysics of reason”. The scientific novelty lies in the systematic application of Palamas’ antinomic method to the philosophical-anthropological analysis of the human being as a “mind-heart” subject; in addition, the liturgical dimension of Hesychasm is included, refuting the myth of the individualistic character of the movement; on this basis, a new interpretation of Hesychasm as a fundamental cultural-philosophical paradigm that sets the civilizational code of the Eastern Christian world is proposed. As a result, it is established that the teaching of Gregory Palamas on the heart is not only a theological doctrine, but also a fundamental philosophical-anthropological paradigm underlying Eastern Christian civilization. The practice of “leading the mind into the heart” is organically embedded in the liturgical life of the Church and antinomically unites the transcendent and the immanent, which has far-reaching cultural-philosophical implications.