The nature of Ukrainian philosophy
Philosophy (філософія; filosofiia). 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 Ostroh cultural center, consisting of the Ostroh Academy and Ostroh 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. In natural 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 in nature. 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 human nature, 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 on nature 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 human nature 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.
To be continued:
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 Ostroh cultural center, consisting of the Ostroh Academy and Ostroh 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. In natural 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 in nature. 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 human nature, 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 on nature 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 human nature 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.
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