Personalization of the Spirit Culture and Ukrainian Mentality in the Philosophy of Hryhoriy Skovoroda (to the 300th anniversary of his birth)

Abstract

Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–1794) is an outstanding Ukrainian philosopher-educator, whose life path is represented by a holistic concept of God-seeking – the search for God, which is the “highest wisdom”. In his teaching, the True Man and Christ are represented as a single entity. The path of discovering the “image of God” in one’s own heart is chosen by the thinker as the salvation of mankind by deep faith, in which observance of “external” rites and true faith are separated. The central cultural and philosophical universal of H. Skovoroda’s teachings is the “philosophy of the heart”, which rotates in the author’s concept sphere and echoes the concept of “joy of the heart” and the image of “roundness” as “desired happiness”, associated with the deep philosophical idea of “kind of labor”, on which Skovorodinsky anti-clericalism was built.The range of worldview orientations of Н. Skovoroda is unusually wide, which allows us to consider him a religious freethinker. The philosopher moves away from orthodox Christianity, is not satisfied with the dogmatism and authoritarianism of religion, and seeks to rationalistically structure the main provisions of the Christian dogma, give them a moral and ethical interpretation, consider the symbolic content and biblical images. The philosopher thought of his personal life as the life of a sage-teacher who is constantly in communion and connection with God. It is important that the meaning of prayer, according to Н. Skovoroda, is gratitude to God for making the necessary not difficult, and making the difficult unnecessary. The article aims to present to the reader some aspects of personalization of the spirit of European culture and Ukrainian mentality in the philosophy of H. Skovoroda in order to interpret the main guidelines of the humanist philosopher’s worldview, understanding the conceptual sphere of his leading ideas, scientific reflections, myths and stereotypes surrounding the figure of the scientist, and determining the universality of the humanistic teaching of the thinker as an intermediary between European cultural values and Ukrainian national identifity.