The article highlights the features of Candidate Degree works of the Kyiv Theological Academy students of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th centuries as the most important element of their educational and scientific training. Based on a wide range of primary sources, the author refutes the false identification of works for obtaining of the degree of Candidate of Theology, written in the Orthodox theological academies of the Russian Empire, with the modern Candidate dissertations. Considering these works as qualifying (...) works for obtaining an academic degree of Candidate of Theology that are of similar status as the modern diploma works of higher education institution students, the author argues that such an approach does not diminish their importance and their great source potential in the study of scholarly work of the Orthodox theological academies of the 19th – early 20th centuries. Based on the example of the Kyiv Theological Academy, the article reveals the important role of independent research work of the students, their mastering of skills of academic reading and writing in creating Candidate Degree works of quality; explains the procedural moments associated with their preparation, review, and evaluation. Based on the preserved manuscripts of Candidate Degree works of the Kyiv Theological Academy students, the paper outlines their subjects related to Bible Studies, Patrology, Dogmatic, Comparative, Moral, Pastoral Theology, Liturgy, and Homiletics, which are considered chiefly on historical material. The author stresses the particular popularity of the studies in History of the Church at the Kyiv Theological Academy, as well as other theological academies, particularly the study of history of the Orthodox Church and its hierarchy in so-called Southewestern Krai of the Russian Empire, as well as the history of the Kyiv Theological Academy of the 17th – 19th centuries. The article clarifies that contrary to the requirements of the Most Holy Synod to offer and choose the topics of exclusively theological nature for the qualification works, The Kyiv Theological Academy found the opportunity to realize the interest of students in other humanities – first of all, philosophy, the evidence of which is more than one hundred remaining manuscripts of Candidate Degree works on philosophical issues. (shrink)

This paper restates and subjects to analysis the polemics in Russian pre-revolutionary Populist and Marxist thought that concerned Kant’s practical philosophy. In these polemics Kantian ideas influence and reinforce the Populist personalism and idealism, as well as Marxist revisionist reformism and moral universalism. Plekhanov, Lenin, and other Russian “orthodox Marxists” heavily criticize both trends. In addition, they generally view Kantianism as a “spiritual weapon” of the reactionary bourgeois thought. This results in a starkly anti-Kantian position of Soviet Marxism. In view (...) of this the 1947 Communist Party decision to preserve Kant’s tomb in Soviet Kaliningrad becomes something of an experimentum crucis that challenges the soundness of the theory. (shrink)

A compendium of the history and philosophy of wildlife from ancient mythology to scientific ideas of the XIX-XX centuries. Content: 1.1 Knowledge of wildlife: a long way from myths to science. 1.2 The evolution of pre-Darwinian ideas about the constancy and variability of species of living organisms. 1.3 The driving forces of wildlife development. Classical Darwinism: the struggle for existence, natural selection, inheritance of variability. 1.4 Genetic views on the hereditary transmission of species characteristics (preformism, epigenesis, pangenesis, neo-Darwinism). Literature.

The Byzantine influence was at the very origins of the formation of various philosophic ideas in the medieval Russia. A major factor responsible for this influence was the Orthodox Church. Thus, it was owing to Byzantium that the foundations of Russian philosophy were laid and all its subsequent developments cannot be properly understood without considering the Byzantine influence.

From the year of Ukraine's proclamation of state independence, a qualitatively different one began, without exaggeration - an epochal period of its development. The cherished dream of many generations of Ukrainians to live in an independent Fatherland has finally acquired a real outline, which in the post-Soviet consciousness of the million-minded people of Ukraine has been associated with centuries of cherished hopes for nation-wide peace, harmony, prosperity and happiness. But Ukraine is already in the second half of the 80's, and (...) more recently - in the early 90's of the twentieth century. entered a period of dramatic and all-encompassing changes, which predetermined the rapid dynamics of the acquisition by the Ukrainian ethnos of its substantive self, and in particular that of spiritual and religious literacy, which related to the need for self-knowledge and self-awareness and found expression in the intensification of Ukrainian religiosity. Involvement in the process of broad strata of Ukrainian citizens, and consequently people of different views, religions and beliefs, as well as the intensity of socio-ideological shifts, not only contributed to the enrichment of ideas about spirituality, but in fact led to its value-based revision. (shrink)

An attempt is being made to consider laughter as a sociocultural phenomenon and to determine the place of laughter in culture. Culture is viewed from a semiotic point of view as a sign system. The culture is always repressive. Repressiveness of culture is determined by the repressiveness of the sign. A sign requires recognition, the ability to read, interpret it. The definition establishes rules and conventions. In a signified space, we constantly feel limitations, pressure, and lack of freedom. Laughter is (...) existing «on the edge» of culture. At the same time, laughter is socially, historically and culturally determined. It is problematic to attribute laughter to pre-symbolic communication means, tribal memory, which links a person’s behavior with that of his ancestors. In the process of social evolution, laughter takes on a sign. Laughter refers to the symbolic and symbolic sphere of human activity and is a purely human property. «Homo ridens» provides for «Animal symbolicum». From a semiotic point of view, laughter is seen as a phenomenon that arises as a result of a violation of the established order of signification, the loss by a sign of its significance, or its acquisition of a new, unexpected value and meaning. The concept of M. M. Bakhtin’s carnival is considered as a theory of the reciprocity of sign and non-sign, chaos and orderliness. The carnival reveals the conventions of the sign, the conventions of culture as a whole. Laughter exposes culture as a sign system, as a system of conventions. Laughter can be seen as a kind of reaction to the repression of culture, as a moment of liberation from the repression of culture. But a person living in society cannot go beyond culture. While criticizing culture, laughter strengthens culture. Laughter can also be repressive, especially in relation to who they laugh at. Laughter emerges as a universal socio-cultural phenomenon, through the lens of which one can trace the dialectic of the natural, social, cultural, as well as individual, collective and social in human life. (shrink)

У збірнику представлено матеріали викладачів, молодих науковців і студентів до Всеукраїнської науково-теоретичної конференції «Україна в умовах формування нового світового порядку» (ХХХV Харківські політологічні читання) з міжнародною участю, проведеної 28 квітня 2023 р. Тематика конференції охоплює новий світовий порядок: основні дефініції та характеристики; агресію Росії проти України: політико-режимний, міжнародний, гуманітарний та правовий аспекти; історико-етнографічний чинник у виробленні сучасної геостратегії України; інтеграцію України до ЄС та НАТО як пріоритет національної зовнішньої політики; проблеми національної безпеки України за нових геополітичних умов тощо.