Gordyichenco V. V. ZNTU

Philosophic views of Mikola Gogol (in my own interpretation)

(Dedicated to the 200 birthday of the Great Ukrainian)

Mikola Gogol (1809-1852) expresses his philosophic idea in his private letters - "Selected places from correspondence with his friends". In these letters the writer discloses the ideas, such as Grigoriy Skovoroda's ideas, - cognition of your own, in other words the soul, and one's neighbour's love. Once Gogol said that the world (so-called humanity!) can be loved but will you love your neighbour? It's not necessary to love the entire humanity, but love your neighbour! It seems like one of the Jesus' ten tables: "love to one's neighbour".

Gogol among the first has understood that the light of the textbooks and formulas will blow out the light of the love.

In his letters he teaches the humanity about "mankind's moral powers" - the idea of the idea understanding necessity, i.e. "your neighbour". Loving the entire world is the simplest thing but will you love your brother (your neighbour!). In this way Gogol calls upon to enlighten "educated ones" (for example such as ourselves - intellectuals who assume airs and cast askance a glance at those ordinary people of little education who has more love and honour than the most "educated" ones who has one, two or even three higher educations and academic statuses - that's meanwhile), puts an idea about understanding one's neighbour's necessity and also wants to enlighten educated ones in order to at long last they had an education not in a revolutionary but in a humanistic way.

These ideas weren't clear for the Great Russian state chauvinism founder Visarion Belinskiy (1811-1847) who was too irritated by humanistic ideas of Mikola Gogol. It had to happen that way! Nevertheless Gogol was a Ukrainian after all! He was a representative of a nation Belinskiy hated, about which he felt sorry that great minds of a mankind are born in it.

One more great philosopher didn't understand these ideas of Gogol, such as Berdyaev, who was born and grew up in Ukraine and didn't admit him to be Ukrainian. He gave openly his views upon Gogol's "philosophy" in this way: "There was something not Russian in the inner world of Gogol". And this is not surprising, isn't it?

And Vasil Rosanov on the contrary has understood the ideas of Mikola Gogol - his Ukrainian essence. The most prominent Marxism critics such as Rosanov, Pamvel Yurkevich, Gogozkiy, Lipinskiy, Gilyarov, Grot, Bogdashevskiy and others who have been living and creating in Ukraine, have placed the search of rationalistic explanation of the world's overcoming.