How to study Nietzsche’s influence in Ukraine? Periodization as a structural framework for the study of reception
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
Keywords:
Nietzsche reception, philosophical influence, research methodology, periodization, functional approach, conditions of possibility, orientation, transformation, Ukrainian intellectual space, cultural self-understandingAbstract
This article is carried out within the framework of the project “Nietzsche and Ukrainian Identity” at the Friedrich Nietzsche College (Klassik Stiftung Weimar) and represents the first part of its methodological grounding.
This article offers a methodological reflection on how to study the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy within the Ukrainian intellectual space. It proceeds from the observation that existing research on Nietzsche’s reception in Ukraine remains fragmentary and lacks a coherent analytical framework capable of accounting for its historical variability and cultural specificity. Against this background, the article advances a structured methodological proposal aimed at reconfiguring the study of philosophical influence beyond descriptive or purely interpretative approaches.
The central hypothesis of the article is that Nietzsche’s influence in Ukraine can be treated as an axiomatic assumption in a heuristic sense. This shift allows the analysis to move away from attempts to prove the existence of influence toward examining the forms, conditions, and modes of its manifestation. On this basis, the article develops a threefold methodological framework.
First, it introduces the notion of the axiomatic character of influence as a productive research premise. Second, it conceptualizes the possibility of reception as a functional category dependent on specific historical and political configurations. Within this framework, periodization – divided into imperial, Soviet, and independent periods – is proposed as a structural analytical tool that enables the differentiation of conditions under which Nietzsche’s philosophy could be accessed, interpreted, or instrumentalized. Third, the article reconceptualizes reception as a process of orientation and transformation, drawing on contemporary Nietzsche scholarship to argue that Nietzsche’s philosophy operates not merely as a body of ideas but as a factor that reshapes cultural horizons and frameworks of self-understanding.
The novelty of the proposed approach is twofold. First, it consists in combining periodization with a functional understanding of reception and an orientation-based model of cultural transformation. Second, and more fundamentally, it lies in a reinterpretation of periodization itself. Periodization is understood not only as a historical horizontal that orders material chronologically, but as a structural vertical that organizes the conditions of possibility of reception.
Accordingly, the article develops a methodological framework for analysing Nietzsche’s reception in Ukraine as a dynamic process of interaction between philosophical content and historically situated conditions of its actualization. This approach opens new possibilities for both a systematic analysis of Ukrainian intellectual history and for its integration into broader international studies of Nietzsche’s reception.
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