HOW TO STUDY NIETZSCHE'S INFLUENCE IN UKRAINE? Periodization as a characterization of the historical conditions of reception and orientations for its study

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

This article was prepared as a part of the project “Nietzsche and Ukrainian Identity” at the Friedrich Nietzsche College (Klassik Stiftung Weimar) and constitutes the second part of its methodological foundation. For the first part of the methodological study devoted to the reception of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, see: Mudrakov, V. (2026). How to study Nietzsche’s influence in Ukraine? Periodization as a structural framework for the study of reception: Philosophical Thought, 2, 92–105 (https://doi.org/10.15407/fd2026.02.092)

This article is the second part of a methodological study devoted to the reception of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy in Ukraine. Its aim is to characterize the historical conditions under which this reception became possible and assumed specific forms in different periods. The study proceeds from the assumption that changes in political, cultural, institutional, and epistemic conditions transform the very space of possibilities for reception. Accordingly, its periodization should be based not merely on chronological divisions but on structural transformations of these conditions.

On this basis, three major periods are distinguished: the imperial, the Soviet, and the period of Ukrainian independence. The imperial period was marked by the limited cultural agency of Ukrainians and by heterogeneous political, linguistic, and institutional regimes within the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires, which created different possibilities for Nietzsche’s early reception. The Soviet period fundamentally transformed these conditions through the ideological monopolization of the humanities, censorship, and the regulation of legitimate modes of interpretation. At the same time, Nietzsche’s reception under state socialism cannot be reduced to official ideological positions alone. The period of independence brought the demonopolization of philosophical discourse, methodological pluralism, the revision of inherited Soviet and imperial interpretive schemes, and the gradual internationalization of Ukrainian humanities. Nietzsche’s reception thus moved from a regime structured by ideological permission and prohibition toward a plurality of research interests, institutional practices, and intellectual strategies.

Alongside the reconstruction of these historical conditions, the article identifies a set of critical research orientations drawn from major works of international Nietzsche scholarship. They are selected not to provide a general panorama of contemporary Nietzsche studies, but for their methodological relevance to the analysis of Nietzsche’s reception in Ukraine under the specific conditions of each historical period. For the early period, these orientations make it possible to identify heterogeneous traces, appropriations, transformations, and competing images of Nietzsche beyond explicit philosophical commentary. For the Soviet period, they help to distinguish official ideological judgments from Nietzsche’s broader intellectual and cultural presence and to recognize disciplinary differences and indirect forms of circulation. For the period of independence, the methodological focus shifts toward the conditions under which free reception can develop into specialized Nietzsche scholarship: historically and philologically grounded reading, attention to textual genesis and context, resistance to retrospective systematization, expansion of the relevant source corpus, as well as recognition of artistic and visual forms of appropriation. These orientations thus serve as methodological tools for the subsequent analysis of Ukrainian material, while their relevance and application depend on the particular forms and historical conditions of reception under investigation.

The proposed periodization therefore functions as more than a chronological division of material. It provides a methodological structure in which the reconstruction of historically specific conditions of reception is combined with research tools for identifying and interpreting the forms that reception could assume under those conditions. In this sense, the article develops the methodological basis for the subsequent systematic analysis of the forms and functions of Nietzsche’s reception in Ukraine.