ONTOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF BARDAISAN – FREE WILL AND “ETHICAL COSMOLOGY”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the ontological system of Bardaisan. A specific view of ethics as an ontological construct is characteristic of the Middle Eastern philosophical tradition. The teachings of Bardaisan lie at the origins of the Syrian religious philosophy, therefore the reconstruction of his teachings allows us to understand the main sources that formed the Eastern philosophical tradition in its originality. A detailed philosophical analysis of the concept of fate in the teachings of Bardaisan has not previously been undertaken. In addition, most of the studies paid more attention to the history of borrowings and the origin of various concepts of the Bardaisanite philosophy and their doxography, while the analysis of individual concepts was usually left out of brackets. The study of Bardaisan as a philosopher from the point of view of the modern philosophical tradition is undertaken for the first time. The article pays great attention to the phenomenon of free will, the construct underlying Bardaisan's “ethical cosmology”. The transformation of Babylonian astrology and Jewish symbolism serves as a civilizational backdrop against which Bardaisan weaves Christian ethics, Zoroastrian ontology, and Stoic anthropology. Understanding the peculiarities of citing Greek philosophy, as well as building the main ontological constructs, provides the key to understanding the Middle Eastern philosophical tradition. The dialogue "Book of Laws and Countries", which is considered in the article, is a vivid example of a treatise-mesekhet, a multilevel discourse, the space of a language game, images and tropes. The article examines models of interaction of various discourses and various strategies for building a philosophical treatise. Plato's dialogue, using Middle Eastern metaphor, reveals the space of language play and intertextuality, dissemination.