“The decline of Europe” and the “New Middle Ages”: following the understanding of history by O. Spengler and P. A. Florensky

The article compares two different views on the cause and nature of the crisis of modern civilization, which manifested itself at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is noted that the concept of the onset of the “New Middle Ages” is an alternative to O. Spengler’s theory of the change of cultural and historical types. But it is quite widely known only in the version of the philosophical and historical reflections of N. A. Berdyaev. The priest Pavel Florensky had similar ideas, but they still did not arouse serious interest among researchers. The article notes that Florensky agrees with Spengler in understanding the signs of destruction of the foundations of Western European culture. But he offers a different interpretation than Spengler’s of the reasons for this collapse. If Spengler makes human history completely dependent on the prevailing law in nature of sequential movement from birth to death, then Florensky speaks of the change of historical eras as a consequence of processes in human nature. These processes, according to Florensky, are unconscious in nature, just like natural cycles in Spengler’s theory. But, unlike these cycles, they have a very definite meaning. Florensky’s concept of the “New Middle Ages” is directly related to his “Philosophy of Cult” and reveals the movement of humanity towards a state of internal harmony, in which the ideal of godlikeness is achieved.