Oriental Renaissance and Georgia
Oriental Renaissance and Georgia, there is a widespread view in Western science that the Renaissance is an exclusively Western phenomenon. According to this view, the sources of European culture, and in particular, the Renaissance, are to be found only in Europe.
In 1922, the book The Renaissance of Islam by the Swiss orientalist Adam Metz (1869–1917) was published in German in Heidelberg, which deals with the 9th–10th centuries of the Arab Caliphate. The book was published after the author's death, and was immediately translated into other languages. Many have understood this work as a study of the oriental renaissance.
The development of the theory of the Oriental Renaissance began in the 2nd half of the 1930s, namely, with the recognition of the Byzantine Renaissance by Sh. Nutsubidze. In his study published in 1937 (Ioane Petritsi) Sh. Nutsubidze noted that the Renaissance of Byzantium stimulated the renewal of Western Europe; It prepared the Renaissance of Western Europe. But the Byzantine Renaissance stopped (for some reasons) and this cultural movement continued in Georgia, where it found suitable conditions. Among these conditions is the economic-political and cultural rise in the 11th–12th centuries and, specifically, the work of Ioane Petritsi and Shota Rustaveli.
In 1940, Sh. Nutsubidze presented the general concept of the Oriental Renaissance and the criticism of the so-called “Eurocentrism” in the form of a report at the scientific conference in Moscow. In 1941, his Oriental Renaissance and Criticism of Eurocentrism was published (in Russian, “Academic Bulletin of Georgian Science”, 1941, vol. 2, No. 8), and in 1947 (also in Russian) — the study Rustaveli and Oriental Renaissance. “The perception of world culture from a Eurocentric point of view is methodologically wrong, and the study of relevant material and cultural facts gives the basis for contrary conclusions” — wrote Sh. Nutsubidze. Namely, the features of the Renaissance, which are confirmed in Europe, do not represent a “one-sided phenomenon”, characteristic only of European culture; The Renaissance began in the East and then developed in the West”.
The theory of the Oriental Renaissance became especially popular in Russian science. It was shared by academics V. Zhirmunsky, N. Konrad and many others. Studies dealing with the Renaissance in China, Central Asia, Armenia, Russia, and more were published. For example, Academician N. Konrad wrote: “Renaissance is not only a fact of cultural upsurge characteristic of Europe, but also a manifestation of the general regularity of the historical processes, which necessarily occurs in a certain period of development of great civilizations”. A. Losev also positively evaluated the Georgian renaissance.
Aleksey Tolstoy was the first to pay attention to the theory of the Oriental Renaissance and gave due appreciation to the merits of the founder of this theory.
Sh. Nutsubidze's research on the doctrine of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is also related to the theory of the Oriental Renaissance (see also Areopagitica). The purpose of these investigations was not only to bring certainty to the question of the true author of the doctrines. The Areopagite doctrine, as a Christian reworking of Neoplatonism, greatly influenced medieval thought, particularly Renaissance thinkers (see Peter the Iberian).
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Sh. Khidasheli
