This study proposes a theo-phenomenological reading of asceticism in Eastern Orthodox spirituality, with particular attention to the Philokalic tradition, analyzing the relationship between the body, emotions, and spiritual freedom. Drawing on the phenomenological distinction between the physical body (Körper) and the lived body (Leib), the article describes asceticism as a limit-experience that de-limits: an exercise of bodily and affective finitude oriented toward the transfiguration of life within the horizon of divine grace. Methodologically, the research combines textual analysis of representative Philokalic authors with insights from modern Orthodox thinkers and phenomenological concepts such as intentionality, affectivity, reduction, and apatheia, in order to describe from within the lived body, the synergy between ascetic will and the working of grace as it manifests itself in lived ascetic experience. Asceticism is presented as a dynamic process unfolding in stages: inauguration through the discovery of finitude; confrontation, in which the limits of the body and emotions are tested; and liberation as apatheia, in which the body becomes co-praying and co-serving with the soul. Emotions are interpreted as an intermediate space between body and soul—as affects of awareness, struggle, and ultimately transfiguration—through which human existence before God is manifested. The contribution of the article lies in articulating a theo-phenomenological model of Philokalic asceticism in which freedom is not the absence of emotions nor the negation of the body, but an affective and bodily reconfiguration through grace, making possible the communion of love with God and with others.
Nicolae Turcan (Fri,) studied this question.