Hohol’s Anthropological Project in the Russian Empire

Abstract

Purpose. To reconstruct Hohol’s point of view on his anthropological project, that is, to identify his answers to the question of what a person is in the dimensions of the essential and the proper. In other words, it is about clarifying Hohol’s position on the principles of Ukrainian existence in the russian empire. Theoretical basis. Our view of Hohol’s legacy is based on the conceptual positions of phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics. Originality. For the first time, an attempt is made to study Hohol’s legacy as a development of an anthropological project. In the process of its implementation, the authors reconstructed the main dimensions of this project, using the biography of the thinker, his correspondence, and texts. Close attention to the peculiarities of Hohol’s anthropology allows us to approach the understanding of the theoretical paradoxes of the writer’s worldview and the factors of his early death as a personal life tragedy of a patriot of Ukraine. The point is that Hohol, in the process of searching for forms of realising his high calling, set himself the task of substantiating a utopian goal. For him, the ways of building russia as a great power involve the emasculation of the basic values of European culture and the humiliation of human dignity. Conclusions. In the course of the study of Mykola Hohol’s works, the authors have identified: a) the importance of worldview and philosophical issues; b) the problems of man in his heritage. It is argued that Mykola Hohol, solving the problem of outlining the general features of human nature, at an early stage of his work demonstrated optimism and expressive life-affirming features rooted in Ukrainian centrism. Significant changes in our thinker’s worldview led to his attempts to substantiate an alternative version of the European anthropological project, which involves justifying the insignificance of the average russian citizen and the empire itself at the cost of denying the achievements of European philosophy and science. The painful experience of this theoretical dissonance was a prerequisite for Mykola Vasylyovych’s early tragic death. Today, it is a kind of warning about the impossibility of combining Ukrainian and russian culture, that is, the danger of a nihilistic attitude towards the achievements of European culture, of which Ukraine is an integral part. The authors associate the prospects for further study of Hohol’s legacy with focusing on his: a) criticism of the Enlightenment and b) clarification of the forms of substantive rootedness of his work in Ukrainian philosophy, primarily in the teachings of Hryhorii Skovoroda.