Lecture 6. Ukrainian Philosophy
1. Peculiar features of Ukrainian philosophic thought
2. Main periods of philosophy development in
3. Philosophical ideas of H.S. Skovoroda
An intellectual discipline (literally, ‘love of wisdom’ in classical Greek) that, in the course of its history, has been variously defined as the study of the basic principles of being, the testing of the foundations of knowledge, the general guide to the good life, the analysis of basic scientific concepts and methods, and the examination of certain concepts of ordinary language. Unlike the specialized sciences, it does not have its own subject matter or distinctive method. Hence, only a vague definition, such as ‘the critical and systematic reflection on questions of the greatest concern to man,’ may be broad enough to cover the various forms assumed by philosophy.
Because it was adopted from other cultures to address certain pressing political or religious needs, philosophy in Ukraine has been preoccupied with practical rather than theoretical problems. The political calamities and attendant cultural disruptions in the history of Ukraine account to a large extent for the lack of durable philosophical tradition in Ukraine and for the absence of a distinctively Ukrainian system or worldview. For this reason some important Ukrainian thinkers (eg, Hryhorii Skovoroda) have been assigned mistakenly to Russia’s more stable philosophical culture; others (Pamfil Yurkevych, Volodymyr Lesevych) did in fact work in a non-Ukrainian tradition. Lacking its own philosophical literature and institutions, Ukrainian culture could be considered to have been incomplete during some periods of its development. At such times writers and poets rather than philosophers were the propagators of philosophical ideas and theories among the Ukrainian public.
Medieval period. The period from the adoption of Eastern Christianity (see Christianization of Ukraine) to the Mongol invasion (10th–13th centuries) was marked by vigorous intellectual development. The assimilation of Byzantine culture was not passive, but an active rethinking that gave rise to original speculation. Because of a common literary language and alphabet, the work of Bulgarian translators and thinkers was readily transferable to Kyivan Rus’. The ideas of Greek philosophers and the Church Fathers entered Kyivan Rus’ through Bulgarian translations of Greek collections or original Bulgarian compilations, including the Izbornik of Sviatoslav (1073), Zlatostrui, Pchela (The Bee), the chronicles of John Malalas and Georgios Hamartolos, the Lives of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, the Hexaëmeron of Exarch John of Bulgaria, The Source of Knowledge of Saint John of Damascus, and apocrypha. The new, imported ideas, which themselves were not systematized and were often opposed, did not displace old folk beliefs, but were set alongside them. Thus, many conflicting answers to the same basic questions were found in different and even the same sources. Neither a single dogmatic scheme not a unified worldview was worked out.
Since political motives played a decisive role in the religious conversion of Kyivan Rus’, the emergent philosophical thought was focused on political rather than religious questions. Authors of the first original works produced in Kyivan Rus’ were not concerned much with personal salvation or the defense of Christian doctrine, but with a higher justification of the political order. Metropolitan Ilarion‘s ‘Slovo o zakoni i blahodati’ (Sermon on Law and Grace), the finest theoretical work written in Kyivan Rus’, shows how the Christianization of Rus’ is the fulfillment of universal history. Grand Prince Volodymyr Monomakh‘s Poucheniie ditiam (Instruction for [My] Children) and the Rus’ chronicles portray the ideal prince, a combination of the pagan warrior and the fatherly Christian ruler. Besides these works, the sermons of Bishop Cyril of Turiv, the letters of Metropolitan Klym Smoliatych (reputedly the best philosopher in Kyivan Rus’), and the writings of Nestor the Chronicler contain philosophical ideas, but fall far short of the kind of articulated, systematic thinking characteristic of scholasticism. The worldview expressed in the literature and folklore of Kyivan Rus’ was practical, optimistic, and life-asserting. The Church Fathers’ Christian Neoplatonism reinforced the sense of divine presence in the world and the expectation of happiness in this life that were characteristic of the earlier pagan outlook. The sharp opposition between God and nature, as well as the spirit and the body, and its attendant rejection of the joys of this world was confined to a relatively narrow class of ascetic works (see Asceticism).
The Mongol invasion of the mid-13th century began a long period of political turmoil and cultural decline in Rus’. For almost three centuries nothing significant was added to the Kyivan intellectual heritage. As a mood of historical pessimism set in, people turned to religion and mysticism for comfort. In the mid-14th century Hesychasm, a form of monastic mysticism, spread from Bulgaria to Ukraine, and in the 15th century a rationalist sect of Judaizers appeared in Kyiv.
Renaissance period. Philosophical ideas and methods of argument gained a new importance in the period of religious struggle in Europe. At the end of the 15th century the ideas of humanism were brought to Ukraine by foreign travelers and by Ukrainians studying at foreign universities. The Reformation, which was carried into Galicia and Volhynia by rationalist sects, such as the Socinians, was very different in origin and purpose from the humanist movement, yet their programs coincided and reinforced each other on many points: the extension of education and learning, the use of the vernacular, the right to individual opinion, and the need to return to the original sources and to reassess critically the traditions built on them. Protestant anticlericalism, public-mindedness, and national awareness had an important influence on the church brotherhoods in Ukraine.
Although these two movements contributed to the cultural revival in Ukraine, it was the Counter-Reformation spearheaded by the Jesuits that threatened the very existence of the Orthodox faith and Ukrainian culture and aroused the Ukrainian Orthodox nobility and burghers to vigorous organized action. At first the Orthodox adopted a defensive strategy: they turned inward toward their own Greco-Slavonic tradition and rejected anything belonging to the Latin-Polish tradition. Returning to the roots of their culture, they revived the use of Greek and Church Slavonic, translated the Bible, and studied patristic theology. The achievements of the Catholic West—scholastic theology, philosophy, and logic—were viewed with suspicion as a devilish ploy to lure believers away from the true faith. New institutions were set up toward the end of the 16th century to carry out this program: the Ostrih cultural center, consisting of the Ostrih Academy and Ostrih Press, a learned circle, and a string of brotherhoods modeled on the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood. The leading Orthodox proponents were Ivan Vyshensky, V. Surazky, Khrystofor Filalet, Herasym Smotrytsky, Ostrozkyi Kliryk, Zakhariia Kopystensky, Kyrylo Stavrovetsky-Tranquillon, Isaia Kopynsky, and Yov Boretsky. To them philosophy was part of theology, and most of their ideas were derived from the same sources on which medieval thinkers had drawn—Pseudo-Dionysius, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint John of Damascus, and Exarch John of Bulgaria (see Polemical literature).
This defensive strategy led to isolation from the larger society and from the dominant culture. Withdrawal from this world for the sake of another world did not appeal to the upper classes of the nobility, clergy, and burghers, who continued to drift away from the Orthodox faith and culture. The Orthodox countered by proposing to study and assimilate the tools (Latin, Polish, rhetoric, and logic) and ideas (scholasticism) of their rivals. This was a dangerous policy, for it diminished the differences between the competing cultures, but it was the only policy that offered some hope of success. The turn to scholasticism was a return to an outlived intellectual tradition, but it created the preconditions for the separation of philosophy from theology and the introduction of modern ideas into Ukraine. The chief proponents of the new strategy were Meletii Smotrytsky, Kasiian Sakovych, Lavrentii Zyzanii, and Petro Mohyla. The Kyivan Mohyla College (later Kyivan Mohyla Academy) was the leading institution to carry out this program.
In spite of royal prohibition, philosophy began to be taught at the Kyivan Cave Monastery School (1631), and the practice was continued when the school was reorganized into the Kyivan Mohyla College, later Kyivan Mohyla Academy (1632–1817). The philosophy courses, read in Latin, usually required three years and covered three main fields, logic, physics (natural philosophy), and metaphysics. Each instructor prepared his own course; hence, the courses differed significantly in content and style. Some of the professors who offered philosophy courses at the academy were Yosyf Kononovych-Horbatsky (1639–42), Innokentii Gizel (1645–7), Yoasaf Krokovsky (1686–7), Stefan Yavorsky (1691–3), I. Popovsky (1699), Y. Turoboisky (1702–4), Kh. Charnutsky (1704–5), Teofan Prokopovych (1707–8), Y. Volchansky (1715–18), I. Levytsky (1723–5), I. Dubnevych (1725–6), Amvrosii Dubnevych (1727–8), S. Kalynovsky (1729–30), Sylvestr Kuliabka (1735–9), Mykhail Kozachynsky (1741–5), Heorhii Konysky (1749), Tymofii Shcherbatsky (1751–3), and Davyd Nashchynsky (1753–5).
The general character of these courses was syncretic—the result of blending elements of Christian Neoplatonism with Aristotelian doctrines. The Kyivan Mohyla Academy’s professors drew ideas freely from the ancient philosophers (mostly Aristotle and Plato, but also the Stoics and Ptolemy), the patristic tradition (Origen, Saint Basil the Great, Saint Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius), medieval scholasticism (Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, J. Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham), and neoscholasticism (T. Cajetan, F. Suárez, P. Fonseca, L. de Molina, R. de Arriaga, and F. de Oviedo). They often criticized Thomas Aquinas, using the arguments of his scholastic opponents. Aristotle was quoted more than any other thinker but was not treated as an infallible authority. The logic course, which consisted of an introductory part called dialectic or minor logic and a more sophisticated part called major logic, was based on Aristotle’s Organon and supplemented with refinements introduced by scholastic logicians. On the central problem discussed in logic—universals—the academy’s professors rejected Platonism and accepted some version of Aristotelian realism. Iatural philosophy they adopted Aristotelian hylomorphism, but tended to stress the ontological primacy of prime matter over form. Tymofii Shcherbatsky was the first to proffer the Cartesian concept of matter instead of Aristotle’s. While accepting creation the Kyiv thinkers tended to minimize God’s subsequent intervention in the natural world. This deistic tendency contrasted sharply with their Neoplatonist metaphysics, which emphasized God’s immanence iature. A growing interest in modern science and philosophy is evident in their discussion of Copernican, Galilean, and Cartesian theories (Shcherbatsky first adopted the heliocentric theory and Descartes’s vortex theory) and the rejection of Aristotle’s distinction between celestial and sublunar bodies (Teofan Prokopovych, Mykhail Kozachynsky, Heorhii Konysky, Shcherbatsky). Some added ethics treatises to their courses (Prokopovych, S. Kalynovsky, Sylvestr Kuliabka, Kozachynsky, Konysky, Shcherbatsky). They tended to reject a narrow, ascetic view of life and to assert the desirability of happiness in this as well as the next life and its attainability in an active, rationally governed life. In style the courses looked much like scholastic treatises: the chief problems of philosophy were discussed one by one by proposing a thesis, listing objections, and replying to the objections.
Modern period. During the second half of the 18th century the Kyivan Mohyla Academy, Chernihiv College, Pereiaslav College, and Kharkiv College were gradually reduced to mere seminaries. At the beginning of the 1760s the Kyiv metropolitan ordered philosophy at the academy to be taught according to C. Baumeister’s texts based on C. Wolff’s system, and thus discouraged any individual originality and intellectual independence.
Ukraine’s loss of the last vestiges of political autonomy under Catherine II and its swift cultural decline account for the weak impression that the Enlightenment made on Ukrainian thought. Without royal encouragement or interest and without vigorous institutions of higher learning independent of church control, the Enlightenment could not grow into a full-fledged movement. It is represented by a few individual thinkers, such as Yakiv Kozelsky, Petro Lodii, Ivan Rizhsky, and Johann Baptist Schad, and propagandists, such as Vasyl Karazyn, Hryhorii Vynsky, Oleksander Palytsyn, and Vasyl Kapnist. A conservative form of Enlightenment based on G. Leibniz’s and C. Wolff’s ideas was propagated by the higher schools; the more radical form articulated by Voltaire, J.-J. Rousseau, D. Diderot, C.-A. Helvétius, P.-H. Holbach, and Montesquieu was cultivated and propagated by small circles of educated nobles. Some Ukrainians (Hryhorii Kozytsky, Semen Desnytsky, Kozelsky, I. Vanslov, Ya. Kostensky, Hryhorii A. Poletyka, Vasyl H. Ruban, and I. Tumansky) belonged to a society in Saint Petersburg (1768–83) that translated and published books by several French thinkers. Kantianism was propagated by the German thinker L.H. von Jacob, who was a professor at Kharkiv University (1807–9), and by Rev V. Dovhovych, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. Kant’s moral theory made a strong impression on Schad.
Grounding a doctrine of natural rights in an ahistorical concept of humaature, the enlightened thinkers proposed to realize these rights (to individual freedom, equality before the law, and enjoyment of property) by restructuring society. All of them were opposed to serfdom, but apart from Yakiv Kozelsky and Vasyl Karazyn they urged the restriction of landowners’ rights rather than abolition. Karazyn and Petro Lodii preferred constitutional monarchy while Kozelsky preferred a republic. Following Rousseau, Kozelsky advocated not merely equality before the law, but limits to economic disparity. All of them believed in peaceful social reform through education and the moral improvement of the monarch and small elite. Karazyn pointed also to the importance of scientific and technological development for social progress.
In its practical (moral and social) consequences the philosophy of Hryhorii Skovoroda is very close to the teachings of the Philosophes, although it has no direct tie with the Enlightenment. It is rooted not in the new natural sciences, but in the humanist tradition going back to the ancient philosophers and in Christian Neoplatonism. In his writings Skovoroda denounced the injustice and exploitation he observed around him, and in practice he renounced this society by turning down a career in the church. His ideal society, which can be realized only by individual moral rebirth, is based on the fulfillment of each member’s inner nature. In this context equality is the full (hence equal) realization by all individuals of their unequal potentialities.
A number of Ukrainians played an important role in the growth of mysticism in the 18th-century Russian Empire. This trend of thought paved the way for the Romantic worldview and German idealism.
The development of Ukrainian culture, particularly literature and art, in the 19th century was influenced decisively by German romanticism. The Romantic outlook attained its fullest philosophical expression in the German idealists—J. Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, and G. Hegel—and it was those thinkers who had a determining influence on philosophical thought in Ukraine during the first half of the 19th century.
Fichte’s ideas were introduced at Kharkiv University by Johann Baptist Schad (1804) and were spread to other educational institutions by his students. The first translation of Fichte was done at Kharkiv by one of Schad’s students in 1813. Schad also acquainted his students with some of Schelling’s doctrines, and his successor to the university’s chair of philosophy, A. Dudrovych (1818–30), absorbed Schelling’s mystical spirit and taught Schellingian psychology. J. Kroneberg, who taught classical philosophy at Kharkiv University (1819–37), attempted to construct his own esthetic theory using Schelling’s ideas. Mykhailo Maksymovych, the first rector of Kyiv University, formulated his ideas oature under the impact of Schelling’s and L. Oken’s doctrines and was inspired in his later ethnographic work by Schelling’s views. K. Zelenetsky, who tried to reconcile Schelling and Kant, N. Kurliandtsev, who translated Schelling, and H. Steffens taught at the Richelieu Lyceum in Odesa in the first half of the century. P. Avsenev followed C. Carus in his psychology lectures at the Kyiv Theological Academy and Kyiv University in the 1840s and probably had some influence on the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. But the most influential German thinker was Hegel, whose system encompassed all the diverse trends within romanticism (moral, religious, esthetic) and subsumed them all under reason. Hegel’s historicism and dialectic made a strong impression on Orest Novytsky, Osyp Mykhnevych, and Sylvestr Hohotsky. They not only adopted some of his ideas but also tried to apply his methods of interpretation. Hegel’s theory of history influenced a number of historians, such as M. Lunin, who in turn influenced Mykola Kostomarov, and P. Pavlov, some literary historians such as Amvrosii Metlynsky and M. Kostyr, and the philosopher of law Petro Redkyn (see Hegelianism).
The Christian Romantic ideology of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood is the finest example of a creative response by young Ukrainian intellectuals to new ideas from the West. As expressed in the Knyhy bytiia ukraïns’koho narodu (The Books of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People), their theory was a mixture of Enlightenment political ideals (equality, democracy, parliamentarism), pietist sentiment, and Romantic notions of historical providentialism and national messianism. A religiously colored faith in Ukraine’s mission to unite the Slavs in a federation of free national republics inspired the writings of the leading Ukrainian writers of the mid-century and stimulated the growth of national consciousness.
As the prestige of the natural sciences rose, the Romantic Weltanschauung lost its credibility. But the ambition to unify all human experience in one all-embracing philosophical system remained strong throughout the second half of the century. Pamfil Yurkevych, probably the sharpest philosophical mind in Ukraine at the time, set out to reconcile idealism and materialism. Although he did not complete this project, his critique of materialism, interpretation of Platonism, and suggestions for an integrated concept of humaature were promising beginnings. A unified metaphysical system was worked out by A. Kozlov, who taught at Kyiv University from 1876. Influenced by Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and A. Schopenhauer, he proposed a theory of critical spiritualism that admitted a multiplicity of spirits and denied the reality of matter. A similar system of ‘synechiological spiritualism’ was proposed later by Aleksei Giliarov, who viewed the universe as an infinite hierarchy of organisms.
Positivism was more popular among scientists than among philosophers in Ukraine. A Ukrainian positivist of particular note was Volodymyr Lesevych. He accepted A. Comte’s teachings at first, but later rejected them in favor of a stricter empiricism and worked out his own theory of knowledge, which was close to empiriocriticism. Some positivist ideas can be found in G. Chelpanov, who taught philosophy at Kyiv University (1892–1906), Petro Linytsky, and N. Grot, who began his academic career at the Nizhyn Lyceum and Odesa University (1883–6). All of them tried to make room for religious faith without weakening the authority of science. Following Kant they drew a clear line between knowledge and faith; they restricted the first to the realm of phenomena and accounted for it in empiriocritical terms. Mykhailo Drahomanov developed his political and social theory in a positivist framework. The sociologist Maksym Kovalevsky was influenced strongly by A. Comte, while Bohdan Kistiakovsky worked out a neo-Kantian foundation for the social sciences. Fedir Zelenohorsky of Kharkiv University emphasized the importance of the inductive method without denying the role of deduction and imagination in scientific knowledge. Oleksander Potebnia‘s and Dmitrii Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky‘s philosophy of language was based on associationist psychology.
After the First World War philosophy developed very differently in Western Ukraine under Polish rule, in Soviet Ukraine under the stifling restrictions of official ideology, and among Ukrainian émigrés. Denied their own university by the Polish authorities, Galicia’s Ukrainians were unable to compete with the Poles in the quality of philosophical education and writing. Some philosophy was taught at the Lviv (Underground) Ukrainian University (eg, by Stepan Balei) and at the Greek Catholic Theological Academy by Rev Yosyf Slipy (scholasticism), Mykola Konrad (ancient philosophy), and Havryil Kostelnyk (epistemology). The Western Ukrainian and émigré proponents of different political ideologies, such as conservatism, integral nationalism, socialism, and Marxism, discussed, with varying sophistication and objectivity, the philosophical grounds of their outlook.
Soviet period. In Soviet Ukraine, for the first few years philosophical activity developed in a normal way: philosophers expressed their views freely, formed associations, and published their own journals. In 1922 the government dismissed some of its ideological opponents from their academic posts and banished them from the Ukrainian SSR, thus warning intellectual circles that it would no longer tolerate criticism of the official ideology. Gradually the regime imposed its control over ideas by dissolving all independent associations and publications and by establishing its own institutions for defining and propagating the approved ideology, Marxism-Leninism. As political interference increased, philosophical debate degenerated quickly into servile dogmatism, invective, and denunciation. By 1931 all creative thinking on philosophical issues had been stifled.
The first philosophical institution in Ukraine set up by the Soviet regime was the Department of Marxism and Marxology in Kharkiv. It was established in the fall of 1921, and a year later it was reorganized into the Ukrainian Institute of Marxism, renamed the Ukrainian Institute of Marxism-Leninism (UIML) in 1927. The institute had three divisions, each with three departments. The Philosophy-Sociology Division (chaired by Semen Semkovsky) consisted of the departments of Philosophy (headed by Semkovsky), Sociology (headed by Volodymyr Yurynets), and, from 1928, Law (headed by Yurii Mazurenko). Members of the philosophy department included Ya. Bilyk, Z. Luzina, Petro Demchuk, and T. Stepovy, who also lectured at other institutions in Kharkiv. Philosophical research was published in the institute’s journal Prapor marksyzmu (1927–30). In 1927 the Ukrainian Society of Militant Materialists (later of Militant Materialists-Dialecticians) was organized at the institute. At the same time (from 1921) two departments of the Social-Economic Division of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN)—those of the History of Philosophy and Law (headed by Aleksei Giliarov) and Sociology (headed by Semkovsky)—functioned in Kyiv. In 1931 they were replaced by the VUAN Philosophical Commission in Kharkiv, which was to prepare a philosophical dictionary. In 1926 the Kyiv Scientific Research Department of Marxism-Leninism (headed by R. Levik and then O. Kamyshan) was set up under the VUAN. Its philosophical-sociological section (chaired by Semkovsky) formed special commissions devoted to scientific methodology, historical materialism, the sociology of law, the sociology of art, the methodology of the history of technology, and atheism. Leading associates of the department were V. Asmus, Ya. Rozanov, M. Perlin, O. Zahorulko, M. Nyrchuk, and Yurynets. In 1930 the department was turned into the Kyiv branch of the UIML.
The Ukrainian Institute of Marxism-Leninism (UIML) and the VUAN departments had two chief tasks: to articulate and propagate Marxism-Leninism and to train political specialists and propagandists for work in higher educational institutions. Besides translating the basic works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin and preparing anthologies and textbooks, their associates conducted prolonged discussions on the nature of philosophy, the place of the Hegelian dialectic in the physical world and the natural sciences, and the weight of Lenin’s contribution to philosophy. Since dialectical materialism claimed to be both a scientific theory and a method of studying reality, its relation to the natural sciences and, particularly, the new theories of relativity and quantum mechanics aroused much interest (see Philosophy of science). The third branch of philosophy to receive some attention was the history of philosophy, which was limited to the philosophical traditions from which Marxism-Leninism had sprung: B. Spinoza and the French materialists, Hegel and L. Feuerbach among the German philosophers, and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and G. Plekhanov among the Russians. In 1930 Petro Demchuk’s book on Spinoza and V. Bon’s book on 18th-century French materialism came out. Hegel’s Science of Logic was translated in 1929. Although the philosophy department at the UIML had a special commission for the history of philosophy in Ukraine (chaired by Semen Semkovsky), little was accomplished in this area. Only a collection of articles on Hryhorii Skovoroda (1923), some booklets, and a solid monograph on him by Dmytro Bahalii (1926) were published.
The so-called philosophical discussion in Ukraine culminated at a conference in Kharkiv in January 1931, where accusations of nationalism, mechanism, and Menshevik idealism were directed at the leading figures of the philosophical establishment. Despite the absurdity of the charges, everyone admitted his ‘errors’ in a published self-criticism. The Communist Party was thus able to call for a reorganization of the institutional system of research and the eradication of the vestiges of ‘bourgeois science.’ In June 1931 the Ukrainian Institute of Marxism-Leninism (UIML) was converted by Party decree into the All-Ukrainian Association of Marxist-Leninist Scientific Research Institutes (VUAMLIN). The UIML’s three divisions were turned into three VUAMLIN institutes—Philosophy and Natural Science, Economics, and History—of the six that were created. Each institute had a three-year graduate program. The Institute of Philosophy and Natural Science (directed by R. Levik and then O. Vasileva, and A. Saradzhev) was divided into four sectors: dialectical materialism (including a section on the history of philosophy in Ukraine), historical materialism, natural science (with the Association of Natural Science), and antireligion. It published the journals Prapor marksyzmu-leninizmu (1931–3), Pid markso-lenins’kym praporom (1934–6), and Za marksysts’ko-lenins’ke pryrodoznavstvo (1932–3). Among its leading associates were Semen Semkovsky, Volodymyr Yurynets, T. Stepovy, O. Bervytsky, Ya. Bilyk, and V. Bon. So-called Red Professors institutes (est 1932) assumed the responsibility of training research and teaching cadres within each of the VUAMLIN institutes. At the Philosophy Institute of Red Professors (directed by Ya. Bludov and then O. Andrianov), Yurynets held the chair of dialectical materialism, T. Stepovy the chair of historical materialism, and O. Bervytsky the chair of the history of philosophy. In 1936 the separate institutes were merged into one Institute of Red Professors, with six departments. The philosophy department was chaired by A. Saradzhev and then Yu. Olman and M. Yushmanov. Philosophical research at the VUAMLIN had been long extinct by the time it was abolished in 1937. Many of the aforementioned leading thinkers perished in the terror of the 1930s.
After the Second World War research and teaching continued to be assigned to two distinct types of institution: research to institutes, and teaching to higher educational institutions, including universities. In 1946 the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR was established in Kyiv. It published Naukovi zapysky Instytutu filosofiï (1951–61, 7 vols) and the bimonthly Filosofs’ka dumka (est 1969), which in 1989 became the monthly Filosofs’ka i sotsiolohichna dumka. Another research body—the Department of Philosophy of the AN URSR Presidium—was established in early 1950. It was headed by Mykhailo Omelianovsky and then M. Ovander, and I. Holovakha. Since any new work in dialectical and historical materialism was ruled out by Joseph Stalin‘s treatment of the topic in the offical short course on the history of the Bolshevik party (1938), and since the methodology of the natural and social sciences remained an uncharted mine field, the history of philosophy in Ukraine became the most promising area in philosophy. A few monographs and numerous articles on the philosophical ideas of 19th-century scientists (Mykhailo Maksymovych, Vasyl Danylevsky, and Illia Mechnikov) and the so-called Russian and Ukrainian revolutionary democrats (Aleksandr Herzen, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Dobroliubov, D. Pisarev, Taras Shevchenko, Panas Myrny, Ivan Franko, Mykhailo Pavlyk, Ostap Terletsky, Pavlo Hrabovsky, Lesia Ukrainka, and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky) appeared. In a crude and obvious manner their authors imposed a predictable interpretation on their subject: materialist, atheist, or social revolutionary. In the 1950s some work, which was equally tendentious, was done also on 17th- and 18th-century writers, such as Ivan Vyshensky, Lazar Baranovych, Hryhorii Skovoroda, and Yakiv Kozelsky. Such studies proliferated in the 1960s; a collection of articles on the history of Ukrainian philosophy came out almost every year. The most important accomplishment of the period was the publication in 1961 of the first full and scholarly collection of Skovoroda’s work. The Latin transcripts of philosophy courses taught at the Kyivan Mohyla Academy began to be studied and translated, and excerpts appeared regularly in Filosofs’ka dumka. A Ukrainian translation of Teofan Prokopovych‘s courses was readied for publication, but appeared more than a decade later, in 1979–81. On the 250th anniversary of Skovoroda’s birth a second, improved edition of his works (2 vols, 1973), a new biography by Leonid Makhnovets (1972), and several collections of articles on Skovoroda came out. The more important contributors in the field of Ukrainian philosophy were I. Ivano, Danylo Ostrianyn, V. Dmytrychenko, Andrii Brahinets, I. Tabachnikov, V. Horsky, P. Manzenko, M. Rohovych, V. Yevdokymenko, and Volodymyr Shynkaruk.
A wave of arrests throughout Ukraine in January 1972 launched a concerted campaign to suppress Ukrainian culture and language. At mid-year the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR was purged: two of its associates, Vasyl Lisovy and Yevhen Proniuk, were imprisoned for criticizing the Party’s policy, and a number of junior researchers and graduate students were expelled. The number and quality of the institute’s publications declined: hardly anything was printed in Ukrainian, and the Ukrainian accomplishments had to be described as accomplishments of the three ‘fraternal’ (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian) peoples. The pace of publication picked up only in the 1980s. Valeriia Nichyk’s monograph on the philosophical tradition at the Kyivan Mohyla Academy (1978) was followed by a series of related studies by Yaroslava Stratii (1981), Ihor Zakhara (1982), I. Paslavsky (1984), and Volodymyr Lytvynov (1984), and a catalogue of surviving transcripts of the rhetoric and philosophy courses at the academy (1982). The scope of research was broadened to include the medieval era, on which several collections of articles appeared (1983, 1987, 1988, 1990). Before his untimely death, I. Ivano finished his survey history of esthetics in Ukraine (1981) and his notable study of Hryhorii Skovoroda‘s thought (1983). Volumes 1 and 2 of the ANU multiauthor three-volume history of philosophy in Ukraine were published in 1987. The most significant recent achievement has been the publication of primary sources of Ukrainian thought of the 16th to 18th centuries in Standard Ukrainian translation: ethics courses at the Kyivan Mohyla Academy (1987), the works of professors of brotherhood schools (1988), and Heorhii Konysky‘s (1990) and Stefan Yavorsky‘s (1992) philosophy courses at the academy. Among the leading scholars in the field today are Nichyk, M. Kashuba, V. Horsky, Stratii, Zakhara, Lytvynov, I. Paslavsky, M. Luk, and Andrii Pashuk.
Since 1972 the Ukrainian Philosophical Society has promoted and co-ordinated philosophical studies in Ukraine.
Outside Ukraine. In the interwar period philosophy was taught in Prague at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute, at which the Skovoroda Philosophical Society (1925–30) was active, and at the Ukrainian Free University (UVU) by Dmytro Chyzhevsky, who established himself as the leading authority on the history of Ukrainian philosophy with his two monographs on philosophy in Ukraine, two books on Hryhorii Skovoroda, and a study of Hegel’s influence in the Russian Empire. Ivan Mirchuk, a historian of Ukrainian culture and philosophy, began his academic career at the UVU. Mykola Shlemkevych, who completed his PH D under M. Schlick in Vienna, developed a philosophical genre of journalism dealing with fundamental psychological-cultural problems of Ukrainian society. After the Second World War Mirchuk continued his work on the history of philosophy. Some contributions were made by his colleagues at the UVU in Munich Oleksander Kulchytsky and Volodymyr Yaniv. Kyrylo Mytrovych, a specialist in contemporary existentialism, has done some work on Skovoroda. Yevhen Lashchyk, a professor of philosophy in the United States, has worked on Volodymyr Vynnychenko‘s ‘concordism.’ Among Ukrainian émigré scholars who have gained a world reputation are Gregor Malantschuk, for his work on S. Kierkegaard’s thought, and Roman Rozdolsky, for his interpretation of Marx’s Das Kapital.
Dmytro Chyzhevsky is quite rightly recognized as the founder of the history of Ukrainian philosophy.
(March 3, 1894 – April 18, 1977)
Not only did he produce the first more or less comprehensive survey of Ukrainian philosophy, which he supplemented with numerous articles on Ukrainian thinkers, such as Ivan Vyshensky, Hryhorii Skovoroda, Panteleimon Kulish, Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Hohol, and Viacheslav Lypynsky, and on the influence of foreign ideas in
The Concept of National Philosophy
Chyzhevsky begins his surveys with some brief methodological remarks about the purpose and scope of a history of the philosophy produced by a giveation. He distinguishes two views of philosophy and the corresponding types of history associated with them. According to what he calls the “rationalistic” view, philosophy is a science that discovers universal truths about the nature of reality, truth, justice, beauty, etc. Since there can be only one true answer to every question, a plurality of answers is indicative of falsehood. Insofar as national philosophies are distinguished by differing ideas on the same issues they are false and hence undeserving of serious study by the historian Chyzhevsky calls the other view of philosophy “Romantic” and associates it with Hegel. On this view differences among philosophical doctrines have a positive value. How can that be so? If absolute ideals can be realized only in the limited particular forms (science, religion, morality, law, religion, etc.) of a national culture, and the differences among national cultures manifest different aspects of the absolute, then these differences are important and valuable. Together they constitute a fuller, although never the full, manifestation of the absolute. Viewed from this perspective, philosophy is the self-consciousness of a given culture: it brings out what is distinctive and interesting in a nation’s beliefs about reality, justice, and beauty, and in doing so makes the nation aware of itself as a distinct entity; that is, gives rise to national consciousness. Here philosophy is essentially national, and all national philosophies, insofar as they are partial reflections of the absolute, are true. It follows that all cultures and their corresponding philosophies are equal. Obviously, this is the view of philosophy that Chyzhevsky favors for it gives maximal weight to national philosophies and their histories.
But then, surprisingly enough, Chyzhevsky goes on to say that at different stages in the development of world philosophy different nations play the leading role in carrying the process forward. This implies that only the philosophy of some nations reveals something new and valuable about the absolute, while the philosophy of other nations fails to do so and has no world-historical significance. Furthermore, according to Chyzhevsky, it is only when a nation produces a philosophy that marks a significant forward step in world philosophy that that nation fully discloses the distinctive character of its own culture and philosophy. Clearly, these two propositions are inconsistent with the Romantic account of national culture and philosophy.
The inconsistency can be easily removed by renouncing these two propositions and preserving the pluralistic conception of culture and philosophy. An essentially similar conception has been elaborated by a leading contemporary historian of Ukrainian philosophy, Vilen Horsky, into what he calls the “culturological approach to the history of philosophy.” On this approach philosophy is an integral part of culture. As a reflection on the possibilities of individual and collective existence, it can be described as the self-consciousness of a national culture.
This conception of the history of philosophy gives rise to two sets of criteria that define the scope of Ukrainian philosophy: first, the criteria for Ukrainian and secondly, the criteria for philosophy. For politically independent nations with a long and continuous cultural tradition and a permanent territory the contours of their culture are quite distinct and the various criteria we use to assign a thinker to a given culture usually coincide and reinforce one another. A French philosopher is normally French-born and raised in the French culture, works in
This is a problem Chyzhevsky did not consider. To avoid a logical circle, traditions, whether philosophical or cultural, must be identified not by their properties, but by the place (territory) and the time (period) in which they originate or exist. To speak of a national tradition or culture there must be at least a period in a people’s history when it freely created its culture and institutions and these must endure in some way as the touchstone of national identity. Memory may suffice to maintain historical continuity and a sense of national identity over gaps in the independent life of a nation. In Ukraine’s history periods of cultural autonomy and creativity sometimes outlasted periods of political independence and it is the former that are crucial for determining the national affiliation of intellectual traditions.
Chyzhevsky is certainly aware of the importance of intellectual traditions for determining the Ukrainianness of various thinkers. A few of Chyzhevsky’s brief comments give the impression that likenesses in the content or the form of thought are sufficient to establish the existence of a tradition. I do not think that they are: to show that a tradition exists we must establish actual influence and to do this it is necessary to establish not only similarities in ideas or patterns of thinking but also causal links.
Chyzhevsky’s concept of national philosophy implies quite generous criteria for philosophy. Without explicitly formulating the conditions for counting a thinker as a philosopher and a work as philosophical, Chyzhevsky includes in his surveys of Ukrainian philosophy not only academic philosophers and philosophical treatises but also writers such as Mykola Hohol, Panteleimon Kulish, and Taras Shevchenko and scientists such as Oleksander Potebnia and Bohdan Kistiakivsky. He has been taken to task for this by Andrii Khrutsky (Andrew Chrucky) who argues for a narrower criterion of philosophy as the “critical investigation of worldviews” and a stricter selection process. Khrutsky’s argument has found little sympathy among historians of Ukrainian philosophy and for good reason. His criterion would not only reduce the field of philosophy to a few academic thinkers, it would also practically ignore, contrary to the culturological approach to national philosophy, the influence of philosophical ideas in Ukrainian culture. To bring out fully the role of philosophical ideas in a given culture the historian must consider not only the texts of professional philosophers but also various literary and scientific texts reflecting popular worldviews and containing philosophical ideas. He should also take into account various attempts to define the distinctive features of the national worldview or character, which have the effect of raising national consciousness. This broad and rather complex criterion captures the range of texts and thinkers discussed by Chyzhevsky in his surveys of Ukrainian philosophy and by later specialists in the field.
Philosophy of the Heart
Chyzhevsky is the source of the often repeated and, in my estimate, meaningless claim that “‘the philosophy of the heart’ … is characteristic of Ukrainian thought.” In making this claim he immediately explained that “the philosophy of the heart” stands for three distinct theses:
1. that emotions have not only ethical and religious but also cognitive significance,
2. that conscious experience arises from a deeper source, a mysterious “abyss,” and
3. that man is a microcosm.
One or another of these theses has been held, as he indicates, by Kyrylo Tranquillion-Stavrovetsky, Paisii Velychkovsky, Hryhorii Skovoroda, Semen Hamaliia, Mykola Hohol, Panteleimon Kulish, and Pamfil Iurkevych, but only Hohol seems to have held all held all three theses. Even if Chyzhevsky were to assert that these thinkers are somehow “representative” of Ukrainian philosophy, it would not be clear how any one or all three theses are characteristic of Ukrainian thought. Chyzhevsky can hardly claim that any one (let alone all three) of these theses was first proposed by a Ukrainian thinker or is accepted by all Ukrainian thinkers. It is not the case that the three theses are logically connected or that the seven thinkers mentioned in this context constitute a school or tradition of thought. In fact they were very different in their world outlook and in their philosophical interests. They used the common word “heart” not as a concept, but as a symbol for very different things. Thus I cannot imagine what Chyzhevsky might have meant by “characteristic” here, and he made no attempt to explain what he meant.
There have been some recent attempts to defend Chyzhevsky against my criticisms of his claim about the philosophy of the heart, which in my opinion have not been successful. Mykhailo Skrynnyk argued that Skovoroda, Iurkevych, Hohol, and Kulish share the view that there is something deeper in man than reason, and therefore they constitute a tradition of thought. But agreement on a very general and vague point such as this is not enough for a tradition. The fact is that the four mentioned thinkers were very different in their worldviews and intellectual interests. But even if they did represent a single tradition why would that tradition be more characteristic of Ukrainian philosophy than some other one?
Another of my critics, Iryna Valiavko, admits (1) that no one theory or trend can be representative of the thought of a nation and (2) that there is nothing distinctively Ukrainian about the first and second theses into which Chyzhevsky breaks down the philosophy of the heart. According to her, only the third thesis on man as a microcosm is characteristic of Ukrainian thought, and she tries to show that, although it is not found in Iurkevych, this conception of man is found in Skovoroda, Kulish, Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Kostomarov, Lesia Ukrainka, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Bohdan Ihor Antonych, Oleksander Dovzhenko, and Pavlo Tychyna.
There are several fatal flaws in her argument. First, she reduces the idea of microcosm to the distinction between “inner” and “outer” man or between soul and body. Although historically the conception of man as microcosm has been closely associated with the dualistic conception of man, it is not logically equivalent to or logically connected with the latter. There is no hint in Chyzhevsky that what he really meant by microcosm was dualism. Secondly, the idea of two natures or substances in man is almost universal. Even the language of “inner” or “internal” and “outer” or “external” man is widespread. Chyzhevsky points out that these very terms can be found in the Bible and in the works of ancient and Christian thinkers such as Philo Judaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Macarius of Egypt, Anthony of the Desert, Meister Eckhart, Jakob Boehme, Sebastian Frank, Angelus Silesius, Heinrich Suso, Johannes Tauler, and Thomas б Kempis. Many more names could be added to the list. Obviously, the language and the ideas behind it did not originate with and are not unique to Ukrainian thinkers and writers. Furthermore, the dualistic terminology that is used in describing man is part of ordinary language. Hence, the fact that some writers use this terminology does not indicate that they have the same or even any definite philosophical conception of man in mind.
Philosophy at the
Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Serhiyovych Hrushevsky was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian, and statesman, one of the most important figures of the Ukrainiaational revival of the early 20th century. He was the country’s greatest modern historian, foremost organizer of scholarship, leader of the pre-revolution Ukrainiaational movement, head of the Central Rada (Ukraine’s 1917–1918 revolutionary parliament), and a leading cultural figure in Soviet
Ivan Yakovych Franko
Ivan Yakovych Franko was a Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, political activist, doctor of philosophy, ethnographer, the author of the first detective novels and modern poetry in the Ukrainian language.
He was a political radical, and a founder of the socialist and nationalist movement in western
Taras Shevchenko
T.Shevchenko Self-portrait with candle, 1861
T. Shevchenko Self-Portrait in Fur Hat. Etching. 1860
Taras Hryhorovich Shevchenko, the great Ukrainian poet, artist and thinker, was born on March 9,
Apprising the comparatively brief but very fruitful creative path of Shevchenko the artist, – authoritative sources indicate that he produced over 1,000 works of art – he is acknowledged as one of the most outstanding realist painters in mid-19th century Ukrainian and Russian art.
For over 150 years his writings – especially his poetry – have been published in thousands of volumes, including translations into the major world languages. Taras Shevchenko, founder of the new Ukrainian literature, is justifiably considered one of the greatest humanist writers of all times.
MykhailoVozniak
In one area of the history of Ukrainian philosophy—the development of philosophy in
Grigory Savvich Skovoroda
(3 December 1722 – 9 November 1794)
Skovoroda was Chyzhevsky’s favorite Ukrainian philosopher. The works he devoted to Skovoroda outnumber by far his writings on any other philosopher: a monograph and over twenty articles. His works are an almost inexhaustible mine of information and interesting observations, but the overall result of all his efforts is rather disappointing. After a lengthy (200-page) and detailed comparison of Skovoroda’s philosophical doctrines, terminology, symbols, images, and phrases with those of several German mystics (Franz von Baader, Boehme, Meister Eckhart, Frank, Silesius, Suso, Tauler, and Valentin Weigel), Chyzhevsky reaches the conclusion that Skovoroda is a mystic, or to be more exact, that Skovoroda’s philosophical system has all the constituents of a “mystical philosophical system:” it rests on a dualistic metaphysics and includes a doctrine of opposites, a metaphysical interpretation of symbols, a typically mystical anthropology and ethics. Chyzhevsky cautions us that, although Skovoroda’s philosophy is mystical, we cannot be certain that Skovoroda himself was a mystic, for we have no solid evidence of Skovoroda’s mystical experiences. After analyzing Skovoroda’s ideas and biographical data, Chyzhevsky concludes: “Although there may be a shadow of doubt about Skovoroda’s own mystical experience, there can be no doubt about the mystical character of his philosophy!” I have no objection to the first part of the conclusion, but I do have some reservations about the second part. First of all, in what sense is Skovoroda’s philosophy mystical?
I would claim that it is mystical only in a weak sense; that is, it is a version of Neoplatonism, a type of system that is typical of mystics but also often embraced by religious thinkers who are not mystics. Chyzhevsky admits as much when he says that “Skovoroda’s ‘methodology’ and ‘metaphysics’ have many analogies in mystical and non-mystical thinkers.” To be mystical in the strong sense, his philosophy would have to have not just a dualistic metaphysics and anthropology, but also a special kind of ethics—an ethics that posits mystical experience as the goal of life and outlines the methods or steps for attaining it. Chyzhevsky claims that Skovoroda does have an ethics that shows how the individual can transcend the bounds of his humaature and fuse with God to become divine. In support of his interpretation Chyzhevsky musters an impressive array of expressions in Skovoroda that are typical of mystical writers and suggest mystical experience. And yet I question this interpretation, and I do so for three reasons.
First, as Chyzhevsky himself points out, there is no doctrine of the degrees of the soul’s progress to fusion with God. Secondly, there is no union or fusion with God that involves loss of self. On the contrary, Skovoroda speaks of union with God as a discovery of one’s true self, as a form of self-knowledge. The transfiguration or divinization that one undergoes is a change from one’s superficial or false self to one’s true self, the inner man. Contrary to what Chyzhevsky suggests this kind of union with God is accomplished not through mystical experience but rather through knowledge and reason. It requires not self-denial, self-mortification, and self-renunciation, but self-knowledge and dialogue. Finally, the key to Skovoroda’s ethics lies in his doctrine of congenial work. According to this doctrine the goal of life is happiness, not mystical experience, and the way to happiness lies not in escape from society and the cares of this world but in activity, in self-realization through socially beneficial work. This is not an ethics of escape from either oneself or the world. Hence, there is no room for mystics or even hermits in Skovoroda’s ethics.
It is rather obvious that Skovoroda’s philosophy is mystical in the weak sense and this requires no great effort to prove. On the other hand, to contend that Skovoroda’s philosophy is mystical in the strong is to give too much weight to his language and to ignore the main thrust of his moral teachings.
It should be clear from this critical outline of Chyzhevsky’s contribution to the history of Ukrainian philosophy that for all his shortcomings it was Chyzhevsky who laid its foundations, which later researchers refined and expanded. Considering the materials available to him and the conditions in which he worked, his single-handed achievement is truly remarkable. During the Soviet period two areas of Ukrainian philosophy received much attention—the philosophical ideas in the culture of Kyivan Rus’ and the development of philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the post-Soviet period, while research in these areas continues, historians of Ukrainian philosophy are turning their attention increasingly on the nineteenth century. The framework of the history of Ukrainian philosophy established by Chyzhevsky is being steadily filled in with new facts, texts, and interpretations.
Dmytro Ivanovych Dontsov was a Ukrainian nationalist writer, publisher, journalist and political thinker whose radical ideas were a major influence on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
Petro Mohyla
Metropolitan Peter (secular name Petro Mohyla) was a Metropolitan of
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The undergraduate programme was based on the liberal arts and designed to develop oratorical skills as much as the acquisition of a body of knowledge. It was organized into five grades. The three lower grades were essentially grammarian. The intermediate level consisted of two grades, in which students began to compose Latin prose and verse. Beyond the five grades, higher education consisted of three-years philosophy programme that paved the way to four years of theology.
Open to young men from all social strata, the Academy attracted students and scholars not only from
The political and cultural circumstances in
Nevertheless the Academy flourished at the end of the 17th century and enjoyed its golden age during the glorious Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s reign (from 1687 to 1709). The enrollment at the time exceeded 2,000. But the Academy’s golden age came to an abrupt end with Mazepa’s defeat at
But after Peter’s death, the school revived. Moderew courses were added to its curriculum. Graduates were encouraged to complete their education in European universities and many sons of wealthy Cossack families studied abroad. The Academy continued to educate the civic and ecclesiastical elite. However, Catherine the Second’s abolition of the Hetmanate in 1764 and secularization of the monasteries in 1786 deprived the Academy of its chief sources of financial support. The school became a ward of the Russian imperial government and its importance declined rapidly. In 1817 the
For its day, the
The great historical importance of the
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