On the Sources of the Ethics of Holy Foolishness

Abstract

The article deals with the socio-cultural origins of the ethics of holy foolishness as the radical religious and philosophical form of the overcoming of evil. The author focuses on the moral ambiguity of holy foolishness, which manifests itself in the contradiction between the appreciated goals and dubious means to achieve them – ridicule, scandals and provocations. Reconstruction of the main cultural meanings specific to the practices of holy foolishness is carried out in the course of cultural-historical analysis of its most probable sources – Eastern mysticism, Old Testament prophetism, and some concepts of ancient philosophy. The disregard of the holy fools to the generally accepted norms and values is explained by the mystical nature of their activities, the negation of ostentatious piety, and intentional rupture of social connections, allowing expressing their own opinions freely. The foolishness for Christ’s sake is justified in the context of religious ideas about the wisdom and morality, dating back to the texts of St. Paul. The article offers several interrelated attempts to explain the practice of holy foolishness from the position of Christian ethics. Firstly, it is considered as the apophatic representation of religious moral ideal, or holding representative samples of wrong acts before the eyes of people to cause the aversion to them. Secondly, it is understood as the practice of cultural renewal, opposing the routinization of moral values and norms in Christianity. Thirdly, the holy foolishness is shown as an attempt to influence the lumpen strata of the urban population who reject traditional forms of moralizing. Fourth, the foolishness for Christ’s sake is considered as a specific form of martyrdom in the conditions of the prevalence of Christian values. The author claims that all the life of holy fools is the attempt to prove that holiness is not only compliance with norms, but also departing from them, and the true saints may be not the most pious, but the most contemptible of those who are around us.