On the use of contemporary modal logics for building abstract patterns of communication and on the applicability of the latter to Theodore Metochites’ (14th century) philosophy

The article is dedicated to the usage of the contemporary formal axiology apparatus, which was designed by Vladimir O. Lobovikov (b. 1951) on the basis of ideas and work by L. von Wittgenstein, G. H. von Wright, V. A. Smirnov, to the theory of silence and communication put forward by the most prominent mundane philosopher of fourteenth-century Byzantium, Theodore Metochites (ca. 1270-1332). Both the authors belong to that philosophical Meta-tradition which has been insisting on the consistent and hedonistic (but non-utilitarian) character of our knowledge. It was Albert the Great, Aquinas’s mentor, who represented this Meta-tradition in the Medieval Christian West. In accordance with the canon of Lobovikov’s and von Wright’s axiology we give special tables of those functions which are connected with the oral and written communication, as well as with silence, so as to show by dint of these that a positive speech on something/ somebody coincides with the norms of commnication, unloike a pejorative or ignominious speech, all this being consistent with G. H. von Wright’s and N. D. Arutjunova’s general appraisal theory. Besides, both formal axiology and Metochites ascribe a superior value to silence, thus enabling us to pose a question about their proximity, if only a superficial one, to the Hesychasts and Wittgenstein. The apparatus in question is instrumental in our trying to build such a formal hermeneutical model that makes one understand certain discrepancies between an author’s self-representation in a text, on the one hand, and his appraisals in the consequent historiography, on the other. This model also elucidates Metochites/ views of the ontological and epistemological foundations of mathematics.