Concept

Sobornost

Overview

Sobornost (Russian: собо́рность, IPA: [sɐˈbornəstʲ] "spiritual community of many jointly-living people") is a Russian term whose usage is primarily attributed to the 19th-century Slavophile Russian writers Ivan Kireyevsky (1806–1856) and Aleksey Khomyakov (1804–1860). The term expresses the need for co-operation between people at the expense of individualism, on the basis that opposing groups focus on what is common between them. Khomyakov believed that the Western world was progressively losing its unity because it was embracing Aristotle and his defining individualism. Kireyevsky believed that G. W. F. Hegel and Aristotle represented the same ideal of unity.

Khomyakov and Kireyevsky originally used the term sobor (Russian: собор) to designate co-operation within the Russian obshchina, united by a set of common convictions and Eastern Orthodox values, as opposed to the cult of individualism in the West. The term sobor in Russian has multiple co-related meanings: a sobor is the diocesan bishop's "cathedral church"; a sobor is also a churchly "gathering", "assemblage", or "council", reflecting the concept of the Christian Church as an "ecclesia" (Greek: ἐκκλησία); secular civil Russian historical usage has the "Zemsky Sobor" (a national assembly) and various local (местное), landed or urban "sobors". Sobornost as an abstract noun formed on the basis of sobor thus literally means something like "gathering-ness" or "assembly-ness".

Khomyakov's concept of the "catholicity" of the Christian Church as "universality", in contrast to that of Rome, reflects the perspective from the root-meaning of the word "liturgy" (Greek: λειτουργία), meaning "work of the gathered people".

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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The higher life which belongs to this sphere, this supreme enjoyment of truth, which as feeling is called "blessedness," and as conscious thought "contemplation," we may describe generically as the life known to religion. For religion is just this universal domain[184], in virtue of which the _one_ concrete totality of the World comes to each man in union with himself, as his essential substance, while it remains no…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
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But in two directions this conception of morality needs to be supplementing. There is, on one hand, what is called duty to God. The phrase is not altogether appropriate: for it follows too closely the analogy of social requirement, and treats Deity as an additional and social authority,—a lord paramount over merely human sovereigns. But though there may be some use in the analogy, to press the conception is…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
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This last expression denotes that which in the Gospels is called denying ourselves and taking up the cross (Matt. xvi. 24, 25; Mark viii. 34, 35; Luke ix. 23, 24, xiv. 26, 27, 33).
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
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Sobornost

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