Pessimistic anthropology and its political implications in the works of Feofan Prokopovich

Russia is undergoing a transformation of political discourse, in which new rhetorical strategies are gradually emerging in the first half of the XVIII century. The role of Feofan Prokopovich in building the ideology of Petrine and post-Petrine Russia requires careful attention to the origins of the solutions he proposed. Recognition of the hierarch as the ideologist of “Petrine absolutism” is often accompanied by ignoring the formation and development of Feofan's theological tools. Meanwhile, the peculiarities of Prokopovich's theological ideas were reflected in his later and purely “political” texts. In a number of his works, Feofan's ideas are closer not to early modern European political theory, but to a specific interpretation of Holy Scripture and the Church Fathers. In particular, at the basis of his ideas about the nature of the power of the ruler, which were broadcast through public sermons and writings published in St. Petersburg, there were Augustinian ideas, passed through the prism of the “political”. After the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, there was a total “corruption” of human nature. A person began to pose a danger to his own kind, which called into question the very possibility of “civil coexistence”. The “corrupted” nature of man after the fall required political power for the existence of “commonwealth”. In Feofanes' writings, this idea was combined with providential rhetoric, which left room for the “divine” in describing the emergence of power as such. Theology and politics formed a strong unity in Feofan's works, allowing him to find consistent solutions to a number of significant problems related to the genesis of “civil coexistence”. The article attempts to study the pessimistic anthropology of Feofan Prokopovich not so much in line with the development of his theological ideas, but in the context of the political ideas of the hierarch.