2025-12-25
Viktor Kozlovskyi
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.
2025-12-25
Volodymyr Yermolenko
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.
2025-12-25
Iryna Borysiuk
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.
2025-12-25
Roman Kyselov
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.
2025-12-25
Natalia Shlikhta
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.
2025-12-25
Mariia Panforova
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.