The Anthropology of Hypostasis

Abstract

"The article deals with the Greek patristic concept of hypostasis which could be conceived as the counter-model of the subject in the history of ontology. Following the Russian philosopher Alexei Chernyakov (1955- 2010), we suggest a methodological hypothesis that Heidegger’s “phenomenological destruction” was incomplete, because the metaphysics of eastern Christianity dropped out of the realm of his ontological work (in connection with the core topic of ontological difference). The consequence for the history/genealogy of the subject would be that it is constituted not so much through the “oblivion of Being” as through the “oblivion of hypostasis” (in form of its reification). The article claims that the history of the subject can be portrayed as an interminable clash between the subject and hypostasis. "