THE ROLE OF PRACTICE IN CONCEPTUALIZING THE HUMAN BEING BY REPRESENTATIVES OF UKRAINE'S ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHICAL CULTURE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY DURING THE SOVIET ERA

Abstract

B a c k g r o u n d . The study focuses on the academic philosophical culture in Ukraine during the late 1960s and 1970s, particularly the legacy of scholars affiliated with Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, who are known as the "Kyiv School of Philosophy" and are recognized as a significant part of Ukraine's intellectual history. The research's object is the specific interpretation of the human being developed by this school, with special attention to the role of practice within it. This emphasis is driven by the fact that the Kyiv School is more commonly associated with worldview and anthropological issues rather than gnoseological or logical ones. However, contemporary scholars tends to concentrate on their post-Soviet legacy, which influences the overall assessment of Kyiv thinkers' contributions. Accordingly, reconstructing the content of their Soviet-era work remains an incomplete task.

M e t h o d s . A descriptive methodological approach was employed to analyse how representatives of Ukraine's academic philosophical culture in Kyiv during the late 1960s and 1970s interpreted the practical essence of the human being. This approach made it possible to reconstruct the meanings attributed by Kyiv thinkers to the concepts of "human being" and "practical essence,"as well as to delineate the scope and limits of their application.

R e s u l t s . In the late 1960s and 1970s, representatives of the Kyiv School, guided by Marxist doctrine, recognised practice as a fundamental factor in the formation of the human being. They considered it the precondition for self-consciousness and awareness of the surrounding world,

which forms the foundation for a person's relation to themselves as a subject and to the world as an object. Individuals gain selfhood and freedom through practice. Thus, the human being shapes themselves through practical activity, and since the forms and methods of practice are constantly changing, the human being is inherently flexible. Accordingly, representatives of the academic philosophical culture in Ukraine during the Soviet period viewed the human as a historical being, rejecting the notion of the immutability of human nature. They contended that historical transformations in modes of activity result not only in improved working conditions and the emergence of new forms of labour but also in the qualitative enrichment of human nature–an "accumulation of the human in the human,"and a continual "refinement" of human essence and its definitions. Furthermore, the Kyiv School of Philosophy expanded the Marxist understanding of human creativity and activity to encompass a form of nature's self-development of the world rather than merely a transformation of nature, into the concept of the human being as the "evolutionary core" (centre) towards which all of nature converges in the course of the history of its development.

C o n c l u s i o n s . Despite their attempts to address anthropological and existential issues, the Kyiv School's conception of the human as a synthesis of the natural and social, and of individuality as a product of social practice, reduced the individual to the social. This is also evidenced by their concept of self-consciousness as one that is realised in "socially significant forms" and mediated through "collective relations,"as well as their conception of freedom not as an individual quality but as the liberation of society and even humanity from natural necessity. Clearly, the limitations imposed by Marxist doctrine prevented them from providing satisfactory answers to the questions they raised. Thus, eventually, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, their core concepts were critically reassessed. Furthermore, their view of human activity as a component of the world's selfdevelopment aligned with the Soviet model of unrestrained industrialisation, which regarded nature and its resources as subordinate to human needs and capabilities. This interpretation of human-nature unity was later reevaluated in the post-Soviet period by former representatives of Ukraine's academic philosophical culture from the late 1960s–1970s, through studies on the "dialectics of the modern age,"particularly the ecological crises resulting from human practical activity and creativity.