The problem of human being in Vyacheslav Ivanov’s religious and philosophical works

The article proposes a hypothesis that work of the symbolist philosopher Vyacheslav I. Ivanov contains an original religious and anthropological concept with which all the themes of his religious and philosophical works are correlated. The author examines the evolution of human understanding in the works of Vyacheslav I. Ivanov, starting with the historical study “The Hellenic Religion of the Suffering God” and ending with later texts. The author shows that the first attempts to raise the question of man and formulate a preliminary answer to it are already found in Ivanov’s research on the ancient cult of Dionysus. His further anthropological developments are largely based on his early ideas and do not contradict them. It is shown what role religion plays in the self-determination of the individual. Special attention in the article is paid to one of the most mysterious works of Ivanov — the poem “Chelovek”. The article considers the problem of self-awareness in the context of Russian philosophy of the end of the XIX century. It is shown that the ideas formulated by V. Ivanov in the poem about the essence of human being take into account the context but are not reduced to any of the existing theories. The dialectic of the relationship between I and Thou is considered as the basis of the human self. The article also touches the problem of love and its role in the relationship between the Self and the Other. In addition, the author examines one of the main symbols in Ivanov’s thesaurus — the symbol of the guest — and comes to the conclusion that the task of the symbolist is to turn over the classical modern concept of the subject and shift the emphasis from the Self to the Other.