Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal

Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities: Historical Continuity and Existential Challenges of Wartime

2025-12-28T14:23:35+02:00

Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities: Historical Continuity and Existential Challenges of Wartime

Agnosticism or Bias? A Reply to Alexander Maxwell’s Analysis of Putin’s 2021 Essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”

2025-12-29T09:43:05+02:00

In the first 2025 issue of Nationalities Papers, Alexander Maxwell published his article “Vladimir Putin, Normative Isomorphism, and the Language/Dialect Dichotomy.” In this paper, Maxwell analyzes Putin’s narratives of the history of the Ukrainian and Russian languages, as presented in Putin’s 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” Based on a seemingly “agnostic” approach, Maxwell tends to renarrate traditional all-Russian concepts without any criticism. His bias is based on both methodological inconsistency and a striking lack of philological expertise. His repeated invectives against linguists should not go unanswered.

How Can Language Be a Sword: Exploring the Nature of Language in the Soviet State

2025-12-29T12:44:58+02:00

The review article examines the recent book by Eugenia Kuznetsova, an Ukrainian writer, translator, and specialist in postcolonial studies, “Language as a Sword: How the Soviet Empire Spoke” (2023). The main themes discussed in the article are the instrumentalization of language in the Soviet state and the development and characteristics of the Soviet Russian language. Despite possible criticisms of Kuznetsova’s book, it nevertheless convincingly shows how the Russian language became the “sword” of the Soviet totalitarian state and why national languages should serve as “shields” for all nations and peoples living there. The importance of the study for understanding the current linguistic situation in Ukraine and the Russian Federation is also emphasized.

“Loci Extrinsec” in Kyiv-Mohyla Courses of Rhetoric and Their European Sources

2025-12-28T14:34:21+02:00

The impressive erudition of Baroque authors was often based not on extensive reading but rather on the use of specialized auxiliary sources. The educational practices of the time encouraged this habit. Since rhetoric was a discipline that involved a very practical application of knowledge, the authors of rhetorical courses often minimized theoretical content and gave considerable space to the so-called “external places” (loci extrinseci). These, among others, included pieces of erudition, maxims, fragments, emblems, symbols, and “hieroglyphs.” Responding to the needs of schools and practicing orators, the European book market offered a wide selection of relevant sources, which authors of rhetorical textbooks and teachers abundantly used. The professors of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy were no exception. Most lecturers provided students with a substantial amount of “semi-processed” material, so that the owner of the recorded lectures could always quickly compose/compile an oration suited to any typical life situation. Depending on the user, this material could serve as a shortcut to avoid the effort of thinking, or, conversely, act as a stimulus for creative thought, generating new and refined contexts.

Professors of the Kyiv Theological Academy on Educational Reform: Dreams and the Reality of Authoritarian Modernization

2025-12-28T14:53:56+02:00

This article reconstructs the views of professors from the Kyiv Theological Academy on educational reform within the broader context of the Russian Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study aims to identify the value foundations of the educational reform models proposed by professors from the Kyiv Theological Academy and to analyze their historical and ideological determinants. The article demonstrates that, on the one hand, the professors based their projects on the fundamental principles and values of modernity, while, on the other hand, they were unanimous in opposing total bureaucratic control over educational institutions and the restriction of academic freedoms. This paradox, that the state must create and develop the educational system as a tool for its own self-preservation and development, while at the same time restricting its control over it, was addressed by the professors of the Kyiv Theological Academy through the concept of religious education or the Christianization of the school based on conservative values. It is emphasized that this conflict of values was conditioned by dependence on the official ideological doctrine, which contained internal contradictions characteristic of all projects of authoritarian modernization. The conclusion notes that, despite a certain degree of archaism, the ideas of the professors of the Kyiv Theological Academy may be useful in seeking a balance between conservative and liberal values for building an adaptive and inclusive educational system in Ukraine that takes into account national traditions and contemporary challenges.

Kant Versus Hegel: Two Views on Metaphysics

2025-12-28T15:13:15+02:00

The article highlights the special features of metaphysics in Kant and Hegel. Kant’s attitude toward traditional metaphysics was defined by a critical stance that limited knowledge to the transcendental conditions of possible experience. Traditional metaphysics did not meet the transcendental criteria of cognition. Instead, Kant developed transcendental metaphysics, which was confined to the study of the a priori foundations of natural science, morality, and law, and did not encroach upon the transcendent world. For Hegel, metaphysics in its traditional sense also lost its conceptual appeal, as it was restricted by rational definitions of God, Soul, and Freedom, which did not correspond to Hegel’s intentions. Consequently, metaphysics and its problems were incorporated into the system of absolute idealism, based on speculative cognition. Hegel broke with Kant’s transcendentalism because he built his philosophical system on the principle of the identity of thought and being, which fundamentally contradicted the principles of transcendentalism. In Hegel’s philosophy, traditional metaphysical disciplines lost their former significance; his project of metaphysics was grounded in speculative knowledge of the Absolute – its conceptual understanding within speculative logic, the philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of spirit. This allows us to consider Hegel’s system in its internal connection with the Absolute. Thus, Hegel transforms metaphysics and its problems into speculative philosophy, which aligns with the aims of absolute idealism.

An Outline of Wittgenstein’s Investigation of Time: A Grammatical Approach

2025-12-28T15:58:40+02:00

This article is an exposition of the problem of time in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). It focuses primarily on the works from his so-called middle to late period (1930–1951), which are explicitly concerned with the problem. The aim is to clarify how time is presented in his philosophy and what consequences can be drawn for the question of the reality of time from employing Wittgenstein’s approach. Wittgenstein’s thoughts on time during this period are marked by the distinction between memory-time and information-time, based on the principle of verification: the former is verified by recalling an event from memory, while the latter is obtained from an external source. From the perspective of the grammatical approach, which he developed at the time, the distinction is shown to be superfluous. Memory-time can be reduced to information-time, and inquiry into the nature of memory requires devising phenomenological descriptive language, which is contrary to Wittgenstein’s philosophical stance. Thus, only instances of information-time can be used to investigate time. However, this investigation demonstrates that the convenient philosophical approach to the problem of time is prone to misconceptions about its nature, which stem, first, from misunderstanding the language and, second, from deriving theories of time from its grammar.

Life Despite Death: Palingenetic Element of the Ukrainian Culture

2025-12-28T20:08:10+02:00

The article analyses the concept of palingenesis (regeneration, passage through death) in its European context and the Ukrainian cultural tradition. The author argues that, in the Ukrainian context, especially during the war, palingenesis is more than just a metaphor, designating an existential reality of affirming life despite death and emphasizing the strength and resilience of life in spite of the forces of death and destruction. The author explores this topic through the works of several Ukrainian authors, including Shevchenko, Kostomarov, Lesia Ukrainka, Malanyuk, Shlemkevych, and others. The author emphasizes the importance of examining Ukrainian cultural and existential experiences as a means of overcoming postmodern relativism and virtuality.

Poetry as Testimony: Reflections on War in Kateryna Kalytko’s Texts

2025-12-28T20:26:10+02:00

Kateryna Kalytko’s latest collections – Nobody Knows Us Here and We Don’t Know Anyone (2019), The Silent Women’s Order (2021), and People with Verbs (2022) – are all centered on understanding the current war, although the poet had previously addressed the issues of comprehending war and the experience of migration, particularly with a focus on the Balkan context. However, these last three collections can be seen as forming a conceptual unity: their main characteristics include the transversality of symbolism and key imagery, the recurrence of certain plots, and the construction of a vertical mythological narrative. At the risk of broad generalizations, the central concerns of Kalytko’s recent poetry revolve around language, memory, and the female experience of survival. In this context, the relationship between space, body, and language is especially distinctive in Kalytko’s work. Her attention to the loci that constitute the landscape parallels a specific conceptual strategy in her poetry that might be described as the anatomy of language. Thus, language itself is likened to a landscape — one with a non-homogeneous structure and a distinct profile. This atomization, the decomposition of linguistic fabric into its elements — sounds and letters, parts of speech, intonational accents — is similar to the creation of a map that records meaning in a bodily, tactile way. The real dividing line between the pre-war and wartime reality is language — its capacity to adequately reflect this new reality. The new language is grounded in the verb, which assumes all the consequences of rejecting moral hypocrisy. The reconfiguration of language under the pressure of wartime realities is also intricately connected to collective memory.

The Functions of Locations in Ukrainian RPF in the Context of the Russo-Ukrainian War

2025-12-28T21:33:52+02:00

The Russian re-invasion of 2022 has had a ripple effect on every aspect of Ukrainian society and culture. Fanfiction was no different, producing many highly politicized works, particularly in the RPF (Real Person Fiction) category. In this article, the author examines the locations in Ukrainian fanfics of modern political Ukrainian RPF and historical Ukrainian RPF about the Ukrainian Revolution (1917–1921) to determine their functions and correlation to Ukrainian identity. As a result, three primary functions were identified: canon building, relying on references to places directly connected to the subject’s public life, as well as constructing hypothetical places in the private “gaps”; relatability, referencing specific details of daily life (particularly during the war) to establish a deeper connection with the reader; and finally, symbolic geography, referring to the especially significant places of war. The last function was the most influenced by the fanfiction author’s identity.

“We are not Going Back” vs “Make America Great Again.” The Discourse of 2024 US Presidential Campaign

2025-12-29T08:57:42+02:00

The article is devoted to the discourse picture of the 2024 presidential campaign in the USA. The research was conducted within the framework of the “discourse – cognition – society” triangle. It is based primarily on three key principles of discourse analysis: sequentiality, constructivity, and strategies. A communicative-cognitive model of discourse analysis is proposed, which focuses mainly on the narrative structure of discourse as a macro-speech event. From this perspective, the discourse of the 2024 presidential campaign in the USA is examined as a cycle of stories united by a common “storyline.” These stories are linked through several recurring sentences, among which several key ones are identified. The main strategies for shaping public opinion and the means of linguistic influence employed by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are examined and described. The analysis centers on the speech activity of the presidential candidates and its semantic structure. Four levels of organization within the semantic structure of the presidential campaign discourse are investigated: general communicative intention, thinking stereotypes, strategies, and the tactics and methods of influencing the addressee. Common and distinctive features in the construction of narratives and strategies by the participants in the election campaign are characterized and identified. Studies of this kind offer new approaches to the application of discourse analysis in political linguistics and may be useful in exploring the mechanisms of public opinion formation and influence on audiences.