6 7 Aesthetic ideas in the culture of Ukraine XVII-XVIII centuries

The culture of Ukraine in the XVII-XVIII centuries is rich in aesthetic ideas that permeated various spheres of life of the population. Here are some of the aesthetic ideas characteristic of this period

Baroque: Baroque was one of the leading artistic styles of the time. In Ukraine, he found his expression in architecture, painting, sculpture and religious iconography. Baroque aesthetics were characterized by elegant forms, an abundance of decorative elements, dynamic compositions and bright colors.

Kobzar culture: From princely times, the name of Manuil, "significant singer", has come down to us. In the Galician-Volyn Chronicle, it is mentioned that in 1240 the singer Mitusa lived and worked at the court of the Galician archbishop. Organized kobzarstvo existed on the territory of the Hetmanship and as a phenomenon had its beginning somewhere in the vicinity of Kamyshny, Myrhorod and Zynkov somewhere in 1750. During this period, the kobzar culture flourished in Ukraine, which combined songs, music, poetry and stories. Kobzars, singers and bards, were peculiar keepers and transmitters of Ukrainian history, culture and folk traditions. Their art reflected the emotions, depth and richness of the Ukrainian soul.

Embroidery: Embroidery was an important aspect of Ukrainian culture and identity. It was distinguished by its bright colors, patterns and symbols that conveyed the spiritual and historical heritage of the Ukrainian people. Embroidery was used on national clothes, home textiles and household items, giving them a special aesthetic character.

Decorative carved elements: Wooden carving was widely used in architecture and interiors. This included carved elements on church facades, iconostasis, furniture, windows and doors. Decorative patterns and ornaments were the personification of the Ukrainian workshop and the skill of the masters to create unique and beautiful works of art.

Folk costumes: Folk costumes of Ukraine of the XVII-XVIII centuries also reflected the aesthetic ideas of the time. They were diverse, with bright colors, patterns and embroidery. The costumes stood out for their sophistication and uniqueness in every region of Ukraine.

XVII-XVIII centuries in Ukraine, it is the Baroque period, the period of formation of statehood (Cossack statehood) and the beginning of national consciousness itself. This is the time of the development of a professional philosophy, close in ideology to the early Western European Enlightenment, and in the manner of constructing the discourse - baroque. The latter determines its bright aesthetic coloring. The basis for the development of professional philosophy is the development of education initiated by the new ruling layer (Cossacks and nobility). She assumes the role of an active creator of a new spiritual atmosphere of life, in which such cultural factors as art, education, and book printing play an important role. As a result of the efforts of the exponents of new social trends, Ukrainian colleges and universities (XVIII century) were created, where they studied according to the programs of European educational institutions. There were two types of schools: Latin, based on Aristotelianism, and Greco-Slavic (Hellenic-Slovenian) with ideas of Neoplatonism. The Kiev-Mohyla Academy, the first higher educational institution in the lands of the Eastern Slavs, was of particular importance for the formation of the educational ideal. As the researchers note, in the culture of the Cossack period there are ideas that correspond to the ideologies of the early Enlightenment, which spread in Western Europe. Important signs of the new were: interest in the knowledge of the world, the desire to improve the human race as a means of eliminating all forms of lack of freedom. Early Enlightenment was a synthesis of two previous social and political movements - humanism and reformation.

The ideas of three European social currents - humanism, reformation and early Enlightenment - are reflected in the philosophical systems of the professors of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. The main attention in their educational courses was paid to ontology, epistemology, and ethical issues, since the main goal of education was connected with the improvement of the mind and moral virtues of the human personality.

Philosophy and culture in general, including art, during the 17th-18th centuries. developed mainly within the limits of the baroque worldview. A distinctive feature of the baroque worldview, in particular, the specifics of its development in Ukraine, is the all-pervading aesthetic principle. Researchers call such traits characteristic of the baroque worldview as mystification, idealization, and romanticization of nature. The named peculiarities of the attitude to the world are due to the influence of the growing level of scientific knowledge, which opens up space for the development of intuition. Irrationalism of the Baroque era grows on a new, purely scientific basis, using the achievements of new philosophy, in particular, the ideas of R. Descartes and H. Leibniz, which were available in Ukraine, and focuses on clarifying the origins and limits of intellectual knowledge.

Natural philosophical problems in the training courses of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy are considered in accordance with the ideas of Renaissance humanism, which

the creative beginning of nature and the highest value. Professor Y. Kononovych-Gorbatsky (died 1653) notes in the course of rhetoric: "There is nothing great on earth but man, and nothing great in man but reason." A person's mind is close to God, therefore he is a "microcosm", that is, a small world, or taken in a reduced form, a "macrocosm".

In the context of the "macrocosm - microcosm" problem, scientists of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in the courses of logic and psychology study the questions of the culture of human feelings and cognitive ability. This is, in particular, feeling, imagination, perception, memory, thinking, speech. In the course of logic, I. Kononovych-Gorbatsky substantiates the principle of sensualism known since antiquity. He divides sensations into external (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste) and internal (representation, fantasy, evaluation, memory, dream). The first contact with the world occurs due to external perceived objects that form images. The author explains the process of image formation based on the ideas of mechanistic materialism, considering images as a modification of "animal spirits" that detach from objects and penetrate the human brain through sense organs. Images that arise in the senses due to the action of external stimuli are called impressive. In further cognition, they turn into expressive images - imprints [6, p. 75]. Impressive images are collected and organized by the brain, the main function of which is the creation of a "general feeling". Sensory cognition is considered as the first stage, and the final rational cognition is the highest degree of cognitive activity. True, the mechanism of the transition from sensory to rational cognition has not been clarified. It is important (in connection with the aesthetic theory) to pay attention to the understanding of sensuous-figurative cognition as "lower logic", if we apply O. Baumgarten's term, that is, the initial stage of cognition.

Baroque culture pays great attention to language issues, based on the understanding of its symbolic nature: words are signs reflected in concepts of things. Rhetorians and poets allow us to trace the originality of aesthetics in this period. Researchers are inclined to believe in this connection that the entire culture of the XVII-XVIII centuries. can be called rhetorical. Rhetoric occupied two levels, which differed in aesthetic qualities.

The first level is aesthetic in the way of formation and expression of thought, that is, speech culture. characteristic of it: decorum, appropriateness, correctness, politeness.

The second level is everyday language, stylistically and content-reduced. In this way, the spheres of application of the first and second types of speech were distinguished: the sublime is a way to reveal the existence of unusual things by means of speech. In the word, they acquire the corresponding secret content. Beyond the lofty style, below the ego, is the everyday world.

The art of speech appears as a secret, unusual and promising knowledge capable of "creating" reality. The importance of rhetorical culture in the knowledge system of the Baroque period is evidenced by rhetoric courses at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. F. Prokopovich (courses: "Poetics", read in 1705; "Rhetorics" - 1706 - 1707) notes the importance of "convincing with language". Rhetoric and poetics are a system of rules supported by examples. In this way, the culture of "elevated style" - aesthetic in form - was formed. It acquired the character of a canon, and precisely because it takes beyond the limits of the usual "everyday" thing, introducing symbols (concepts, images) into the world, it became a language for those "initiated", that is, those associated with a certain content of culture. At the same time, it is not the truth about things, but the "technology" of reproduction of general representations about things.

The differentiation of the levels of speech culture also reflects a deeper content: the difference in the levels of spiritual experience and the hierarchy of life values. Their division into "higher" and "lower" guided the personality on the path of reasonable self-limitation and conscious self-control. Medieval mystical asceticism gives way to "ascetic spirituality" in the Baroque era. The baroque ideal is an ascetic-philosopher, who is close to the ideal of ancient love for all living things, but at the same time directed in spirit to the eternal, heavenly. In the 17th century. there are works that reveal the complex nature of spirituality. K. Sakovich's first national textbook on philosophy (1620) reflected an interest in phenomena without consciousness - images that are immersed in dreams when the mind is freed from daily worries. They help create an unusual reality, an unreal world. In the treatise "On the Soul" (1625), K. Sakovich expresses the idea of "dreamlike" fantasy, characteristic of the Baroque era, as part of the brain's analytical activity, which has much in common with logical thinking. "Similarities perceived by the imagination, sent by the common sense," the philosopher notes, "remain in it more firmly and are experienced more carefully. Not only during the day, but also at night, in a dream it interprets these similitudes and creates many new things..." .

In the last decade of the 17th century. a book of poems / appears. Ornovsky's "Speza of Precious

stones", containing magnificent examples of baroque lyrical phantasmagoria. No less important for the theory of aesthetics were the poet's arguments about the possibilities of poetry to illuminate the "secret depths of the human mind" thanks to the associative series that arose on the basis of a combination of contemplation (sensual impressions), imagination and dreams. The poet notes the subconscious as a source of vivid images and creative impulses.

In the 30s of the 18th century. a course of lectures by M. Dovgalevsky "Poetics" appeared, which testified to the popularity of the phantasmagoric poetic style and gave instructions on the creation of this type of verse. In particular, the author noted the fruitfulness of the state of inspiration, the role of fantasy that rises above the ordinary, giving the world a dream-alogical image. This is, in particular, the interpretation of space in Baroque fine art. Here, the earthly and heavenly firmaments are constantly juxtaposed and the character is in both at the same time spaces Yes, in the engravings of L. Tarasevich, the imaginary and the real are constantly intertwined, creating an image of a special state of merging "heaven" with "earth".

Contradictions between the internally completed religious model of the world and its scientific picture, which was formed in the era of baroque and rationalism, influenced the worldview of the first Ukrainian professional philosopher Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722-1794). His aesthetic ideas are organically combined with ontology, epistemology and moral issues, which are the cornerstone of the philosopher's work. The aesthetic dimension has a dialogic method of his philosophy, aimed at spiritual "cooperation": at the relationship of two worlds, the opposite movement of which is designed to find the truth, that is, to give a harmonious image of the being of the spirit as its true state. This is a spiritual movement, a movement towards the truth through a person's overcoming of everything that is fluid, external, everything that blocks a person's way to himself. As he notices philosopher, the opportunity to grasp the truth is not in the things of the external world, but within a person — in his ability to know his nature, that is, his spiritual, not mortal nature.

The discovery of the path to self-knowledge forms the basis of H. Skovoroda's philosophy. Its effectiveness consists in the fact that it is a way of "peeking" into the world, discovering their essence - true life - through the appearance (form of things). The worldview ideal of H. Skovoroda was formed under the influence of two spiritual principles: a traditional religious worldview and scientific knowledge that spread in Ukraine from the West. The philosopher synthesized

them in such a way that the knowledge that affirms the value of a person with his inherent wealth of soul and spirit became true for him. In the philosopher's terminology, this is feeling and reason, respectively. To justify his philosophical ideas, H. Skovoroda uses the "allegorical" method of proof prescribed by the Holy Scriptures, and the philosopher is characterized by poetic inspiration, which often leads to the limits of the complete negation of the literal meaning and the one that gives the second - the allusive one. V. Zenkovsky in the work "History of Russian Philosophy", characterizing the peculiarity of the philosophy of H. Skovoroda, writes that the allegorical interpretation was his source of inspiration. In him lives a genuine illumination of faith, he is a mystic, in the best sense of the word, but his mind has no limitations in its free inspiration, and the traits of rationalism are often inherent in him.

It can be argued that his ontology has an aesthetic character: the philosopher understands peace as the unity of opposites or as the unity of "two natures" - visible and invisible, that is, living truth and God. The harmony of these relations is due to the fact that the organizing principle is "the invisible nature - God". In such an antithetical interpretation of existence, begun by Plato and developed in Christian philosophy, the world appears to be reasonably and expediently arranged, therefore the aesthetic direction acquires knowledge, because it itself is valuable in the sense that it reveals the meaning of the world precisely as it is perfect. Since the truth is hidden behind appearance ("impermanent existence"), it can be known only by a person who is capable of understanding the essence by appearance. A moral attitude to the world reveals its truth as beauty and perfection. Like Plato, H. Skovoroda considers the sensual beauty of things to be the first step. They ignite feelings and build a bridge to the realization of the idea of beauty.

Self-worth of spiritual (and not purely rational) knowledge, which can be characterized as aesthetic, is a distinguishing feature of H. Skovoroda's ontology. It is not about the incomparability of two methods of knowledge, but about the quality of each method. The philosopher insists on the primacy of sensual knowledge and from it - elevation to spiritual feeling. The spirit, exalted above the captivity of sensuality, is capable of comprehending the truth. In such an understanding of duality, the understanding of the presence of two ego hypostases in every manifestation of being: ideas and an image, that is, ideas of integrity and an image of the beauty of the world.

In the work of H. Skovoroda, the idea of the unity of truth, good and religion is at the center of the corner

asoty Beginning the dialogue "Askhan" in a letter to M. Kovalinsky, he explains the title of the work: "Askhan is the daughter of Khalev, who entered the promised land. It means beauty." And the city of Arvon (Hebron) means "friendship". In the work "Narcissus" a completely original interpretation of the mythological image of antiquity is given. Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image, seen in the waters of the stream, the philosopher does not condemn how it has become entrenched in culture, but approves on the basis that it was not a mortal likeness that was revealed to him, but his own essence. And Narcissus turned into clear waters, because "everyone is where he is by heart" [22, p. 64]. The philosopher notes that the image of Narcissus "brings good news": Know yourself. To be satisfied with yourself and fall in love with yourself, you need to know yourself. The first step to this is falling in love with beauty. "The heart does not love, it does not see beauty... Self-love is truly good if it is holy; it is holy when it is true..."

Beauty in a person, notes the philosopher, is not the body, but the heart. Beauty is a thing, and with our things we are united with everything. Visible nature is only a shadow of a true person. "Not our external flesh, but our thought - this is our main man", i.e. "spiritual body". A philosopher calls thought a heart, and a heart a person. Thus, a trinity is formed: truth, goodness, beauty. Having recognized a person in ourselves, we are able to ascend to the awareness of everything in everything, because "a true person and God are one and the same." The philosopher sees the dialectic of the soul and thoughts as follows: thoughts are "seeds" (the source of life), and "the counsel in the heart is the head of our affairs." The cited citations in the context of aesthetic problems attract not only the figurativeness of the expression of opinion. An interesting baroque form of thought construction, replete with juxtapositions and associations. They combine classical images of culture and at the same time bring to the universal (existent), seemingly everyday manifestations of the sensually given world of natural objectivity. This is a grain, an ear of corn, thistles, ashes, water, grass, birds... In this way, the opposition of two levels of the construction of thought is overcome: high (rhetorical techniques) and "low", (ordinary), proving that the matter is essentially true. This gives the expressed opinion a perfect form.

Skovoroda deeply understands the ontology of beauty, considering it not as an attributive feature, but as the essence of life. A person's mind and heart are essential signs. Thanks to them, a person is able to know himself - the true person in himself. In connection with the question of grounded knowledge, the concept of the criterion of His truth is revealed: only a "true man" is able to see the truth in everything. "...Not understanding yourself... is the same as losing yourself"

The dialogues contain opinions that are important for the theory of aesthetics in understanding the criteria for the aesthetic assessment of artistic phenomena.

The philosopher notes the importance of distinguishing between "matter" and "idea" in a work of art: drawing, or "proportion and placement of colors", this is painting, and besides, paint is "dirt and only emptiness". Similar construction is not only brick and lime. It is impossible to know it without a plan, because the beauty of the structure is revealed thanks to the understanding of the plan, symmetry, proportion, and size of its parts. An animal also sees, and a person understands, who is able to relate parts to the whole, to see purpose, to admire forms, measure, etc. Interesting arguments of the philosopher about the beauty of musical sound.

The interpretation of the relationship between the idea of a thing and its sensory givenness is relevant for the theory of aesthetics. "How dare you say that the vessel disappeared when the shard was broken?" — the protagonist of the author asks the interlocutor. On the basis of numerous figurative comparisons, it is proved that "the main principle is eternal", that is, the idea of a thing is "eternal principle". Important for the theory of aesthetics is the position in the relation "mind - heart". In epistemology, H. Skovoroda considers the heart, which overcomes the "evil seeds of the mind," to be primary. The heart is a real, true person. It is important to emphasize this idea, since, on the one hand, it fits into the general trend of the culture of the European Enlightenment (focus on the education of the mind and feelings of the individual); on the other hand, in Skovoroda, it acquires originality, because it is connected with the spiritual, inner work of a person: knowing a person in oneself through self-immersion in the world of one's own Self and, consequently, developing relations with the world from the standpoint of humanity. The Western cognitive paradigm is primarily aimed at understanding the "mechanisms" of cognition and considers the mind as an "instrument" of cognitive ability, while sensitivity (the heart) is considered more of an inhibitory factor. In the philosophy of G. Skovoroda, the relationship "mind - heart" reveals the meaning of the integrity of a person: the spirituality of his world, and in the interaction of mind and heart he prefers the heart when it comes to self-knowledge ("Narcissus"), and the mind when it comes to knowledge of the symbolic world of culture - the world of the Bible ("Dialogue. The name of the ego is the Deluge."

The problems of the aesthetic theory of H. Skovoroda are considered as a unity of moral and epistemological problems, which form organic mutual transitions

logical and aesthetic knowledge. H. Skovoroda belonged to those rare individuals who not only reflected the problems of life in the truth, but also lived according to the truth.

In general, aesthetic ideas in the culture of Ukraine of the XVII-XVIII centuries reflected the richness and variety of artistic expressions and heritage of this period. They represented a combination of the beautiful and the functional, unique symbols and forms that still remain significant and important for Ukrainian art and culture.