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philosophy at Kyiv University, emphasized, "the source of all truth is the mind as
the closest treasurer of the idea of truth."
At the end of the first half of the XIXth century, a significant role in the
development of Ukrainian cultural thought was played by the Cyril-Methodius
Brotherhood, one of the founders of which was the young professor of Kyiv
University Nikolay Kostomarov (1817-1885), a well-known Ukrainian historian,
ethnographer, folklorist in the future. Members of the fraternity, including, in
particular, T. Shevchenko and P. Kulish, prepared a charter, programme of
activities and other documents. They explored the origin of the cultural and
historical process, national identity of the Ukrainian people, issues of development
of the Ukrainian-Rus culture. It is interesting that M. Kostomarov saw the causes
of crisis phenomena in culture and society in the selfish motivation of the behavior
of leaders of various kinds, the desire to gain their own (and not only material)
advantages contrary to universal human standards. In one of his writings, he writes,
"The crown of all was terrible selfishness, which was then expressed by the fact
that a significant part of the young converters of society, married, and reborn in
stock market players and exploiters of someone else's property by all possible
means, the same who remained energetically committed to theirs nihilistic theories
that produce any means for the purpose, have morally produced a generation of
crazy fanatics who dare to hold their beliefs with daggers and pistols. Such were
the inevitable consequences of the doctrine, which was predominantly determined
by materialism and the rejection of the moral law embedded in the heart of man by
the eternal mind, which manages unknown paths, the whole fate of the history of
mankind. "
Significant contribution to the understanding of specifically culturological
issues in Ukraine in the XIXth century was made by representatives of academic
philosophy, such as P. Yurkevich, V. LeSevich, M. Drahomanov, O. Potebnya,
G. Chelpanov. It should be noted that although in Ukraine there were powerful
centers of professional philosophical thought (such as Kyiv and Kharkiv
universities, for example), but the lack of state independence and the actual
displacement of the Ukrainian language from academic science resulted in the fact
that practically all researches of domestic scientists were written and published in
Russian. As a result, their authors were considered, as a rule, in the context of
Russian, not Ukrainian science and philosophy. Today, the return to the Ukrainian
culture and scientific history of a number of names – such as P. Yurkevich – is
relevant.
Pamphil Yurkevych (1827-1874) is one of the most prominent Ukrainian
philosophers of the nineteenth century. In his theoretical works such as "Idea",
"From the Science of the Human Spirit", "Language of Physiologists and
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