Philosophy on the rocks

Abstract

The paper deals with key collisions (during late 2014 — late 2015), concerning the state of philosophical community and prospects of philosophy as the education and research discipline in Ukraine, related to the ambiguous introduction of the new Law about Higher Education. The author describes the attempts of the philosophical community to give such a response to the challenges which would rather agree with the principal propositions and a spirit of the new Law (principles of the university autonomy, in particular) and would simultaneously favor the improvement of teaching philosophy than would remove the latter from the education field. The principles which serve as foundation of the philosophy state in the reformed Ukrainian education have been formulated: (1) the balanced state of narrow-specialized and general education competences; (2) the basic place of philosophy in the system of the Western intellectual culture, reflected in the intersectoral strategy of UNESCO concerning philosophy (philosophy — school of freedom and democracy); (3) a necessity of confirmation of critical thinking, autonomy of intellect and mechanisms of non-totalitarian formation of the person identity. The stress is laid on the amorphous character of the home philosophical community as the cause of indeterminacy of its future.