The Development of Philosophical Thought in Ukraine

Philosophical Views of P.D. Yurkevich and O.O. Potebnia

Pamfil Danylovych Yurkevich (1827-1874), the son of a priest from the Poltava region, graduated from the Kyiv Theological Academy, where he later became a professor, teaching the history of philosophy. When philosophy was reinstated in Russian universities after a ten-year hiatus, he received an invitation in 1861 to take up a professorship at Moscow University. Among his notable works are Idea, The Heart and Its Significance in the Spiritual Life of Man According to the Teachings of the Word of God, and Reason in Plato’s Teaching and Experience in Kant’s Doctrine.

His relatively short work Idea holds crucial importance for understanding Yurkevich’s general philosophical position and his approach to addressing ontological and epistemological questions. The things and phenomena that constitute reality are in constant motion and development. The "objective force" that determines the origin of phenomena and serves as both the law and condition of their development may be called an idea. Here, the idea can be envisioned as a spiritual blueprint of reality that is realized through things and within them, becoming actualized. The idea is "the eternal essence and form of any reality… The true essence of a subject is not grasped through perception but in the idea of the subject, and hence, it follows that the idea itself is ideal."

For Yurkevich, the concept of the idea aligns more closely with Plato's understanding than with Kant's. As we recall, in Plato's thought, ideas are the archetypes of earthly things, existing independently in the realm beyond the heavens, without direct relation to human beings. In contrast, for Kant, ideas are a priori forms of reason related to transcendent objects, toward which theoretical reason strives in vain; these ideas serve as regulative principles in the process of cognition, proposed by reason to satisfy the intellect’s desire to transcend the limits of experience.

Yurkevich further addresses epistemological issues. Man comprehends reality through various forms of knowledge: representations, concepts, and ideas. In representation, we deal with the subjective image of a phenomenon, meaning that our perceptions, to some extent, are mental occurrences at the level of consciousness. In concepts, the level of consciousness is reached (thinking), and a concept is defined as “the awareness of the necessary connection and relationship of the elements that constitute the phenomenon.” By ascending through thought to a higher level than that of a concept, man transitions to the idea. From an epistemological perspective, the idea signifies the extent to which we grasp the very idea with which we dealt in the ontological aspect, where it was presented as the foundation of the existence and development of things and phenomena. Here, the idea is the knowledge of the foundation, law, and norm of a phenomenon, when "reason is considered real, and reality reasonable."

Thus, two interrelated dimensions of the concept of "idea" emerge: the ontological and the epistemological. The term "epistemological" is used here somewhat inadequately since the "objective idea" corresponds to the "spiritual idea," meaning the "objective idea" comprehended by the human spirit. According to Yurkevich, fundamental worldview questions are resolved in our spirit even before they are consciously acknowledged; the seeds of a worldview exist in the soul of every person because "this world is subject to the spiritual legislation of self-consciousness before and beyond our abstract thinking, which attempts to point to the presence of spiritual or ideal connections in it. Thus, the explanation of the world of phenomena from the idea is merely a continuation of the work that the spirit continuously carries out throughout its temporal development." Philosophy is the endeavor that brings our worldview from vague intentions to "comprehending thought," when "the ideal movement of comprehending thought coincides with the real course of the understood things."

Yurkevich is also the most prominent proponent of the Ukrainian philosophical tradition of cordocentrism—the philosophy of the heart. In his work The Heart and Its Significance in the Spiritual Life of Man, he opposes the view that reason is the foundation of human spiritual life. He posits that the heart, rather than the mind, is the center of spiritual and emotional life in humans (and even a physiological organ). In the heart originate human volitional intentions, cognitive actions of the soul, as well as numerous emotions, anxieties, and passions. The heart concentrates the moral life of a person. Theories that reduce the essence of spiritual and emotional life to the workings of the brain are one-sided. The essence of the soul cannot be reduced to mere thought. "Thought," Yurkevich observes, "does not exhaust the fullness of human spiritual life, nor does the perfection of thought signify all the perfections of the human spirit." By developing his philosophy of the heart, Yurkevich sought to overcome the one-sidedness of philosophical teachings and to harmonize in man knowledge and faith, reason and feeling.

The philosophical work of Oleksandr Opanasovych Potebnia (1835-1891) is also of great significance. Born in the Poltava region, he graduated from Kharkiv University in 1856 and began teaching there in 1860. In 1875, he became a professor at the same university. His main work, Notes on Russian Grammar, was the first in domestic literature to raise the issue of the necessity to study the history of thought in connection with the development of language. He attempted to establish general semantic principles for humanity's understanding of the main categorical relationships of reality. Potebnia hinted at a distinction between language and speech, a concept later fully developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Potebnia can be considered one of the founders of ethno- and sociolinguistics. He was also convinced that language shapes thought, and this conviction allowed him to see myths, folklore, and literature as modeling systems stemming from language. For him, language was not an isolated system but connected with the entire culture of a people.