FROM PEOPLE TO NATION: THE PRAGUE PERIOD OF THE HISTORY OF UKRAINIAN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Keywords:
Ukrainian Political and Philosophical Thought in Interwar Czechoslovakia (1921–1945), problems of philosophy of history and nation-building, community, liberalism, centrismAbstract
The author of the article, based on a study of the writings of intellectuals from the Ukrainian diaspora in interwar Czechoslovakia, primarily professors at the Ukrainian Free University in Prague (1921-1945), formulates some ideas and trends and defines the Prague period of Ukrainian political philosophy. This period is determined by the formation of a powerful centre of Ukrainian intellectual life in Prague, a kind of "Noah's Ark" of Ukrainian emigration. The Prague period of the history of Ukrainian thought in exile is characterised by intellectual freedom of ideas and discussions, which is different from the situation in the postwar period. Among the main topics of discussion are the problems of philosophy of history and nation-building (national mentality, consciousness, national philosophy), problems of philosophy and theory of law, and discussions between modern ideologies. From the perspective of the history of ideas, the Prague period was a continuation of the history of Ukrainian centrism, the 19th-century Ukrainophile discourse that largely continued Drahomanov's ideas of "Hromadivstvo", combining classical liberal notions with an awareness of the importance of both Ukrainian national struggle and social emancipation. This calls into question the linear progressivist scheme of Ukrainian intellectual history, in which the period of "narodnytstvo/populism" is "dialectically sublated" by the modernist period, and "federalism" cedes ground to "independence" (according to I. Lysiak-Rudnytskyi), thus, the "Ukrainophile" stage of the development of the philosophy of the Ukrainian national idea has been fulfilled (in the terms of V. Horsky), and the Drahomanov's worldview had to logically surrender to the ideas of integral nationalism. The article challenges these evolutionist schemes and emphasises that the Prague period of Ukrainian intellectual history contains many useful ideas for the history of Ukrainian liberalism and centrism in general.
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