Contemporary Religious Philosophy. New-Thomism (Bokchenjsky, Watter, Mariten)
Religious philosophy is the explanation of the meanings and justifications behind fundamental religious claims that is inspired and directed by religion, such as Buddhist philosophy, Christian philosophy, Hindu philosophy or Islamic philosophy. It is particularly interested in the nature and existence of God, or gods, or the divine.
It is sometimes distinguished from philosophy of religion, a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the philosophical study of religion. Philosophy of religion is the thinking about religion which critically examines the religions of the world, their justifications, meanings, social purposes, and claims, which can be carried out dispassionately by a believer and non-believer alike.
Concepts specifically concerning the existence and nature of God are listed under Category:Theology.
Neo-Scholasticism is the revival and development of medieval scholastic philosophy starting from the second half of the 19th century. It has some times been called neo-Thomism partly because Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century gave to scholasticism a final form, partly because the idea gained ground that only Thomism could infuse vitality into 12th century scholasticism.
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. The foundation of Maritain’s thought is Aristotle, St. Thomas and the Thomistic commentators, especially John of St. Thomas. He is eclectic in his use of these sources. Maritain’s philosophy is one based, like his champions, on evidence of being first by the senses and second that which is acquired by an understanding of first principles (metaphysics). Fundamentally, Maritain is a metaphysician who defended philosophy as a science against those who would degrade it. He promoted philosophy as the queen of sciences.
27.Ukranian Philosophy: the stages of development, peculiarity, perspectives.
Dmytro Chyzhevsky is quite rightly recognized as the founder of the history of Ukrainian philosophy.
Not only did he produce the first more or less comprehensive survey of Ukrainian philosophy, which he supplemented with numerous articles on Ukrainian thinkers, such as Ivan Vyshensky, Hryhorii Skovoroda, Panteleimon Kulish, Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Hohol, and Viacheslav Lypynsky, and on the influence of foreign ideas in Ukraine, as well as a book on Hryhorii Skovoroda, he also laid out the theoretical framework and methodological requirements of the field.
Medieval period. The period from the adoption of Eastern Christianity (see Christianization of Ukraine) to the Mongol invasion (10th–13th centuries) was marked by vigorous intellectual development.
Renaissance period. Philosophical ideas and methods of argument gained a new importance in the period of religious struggle in Europe. At the end of the 15th century the ideas of humanism were brought to Ukraine by foreign travelers and by Ukrainians studying at foreign universities.
Modern period. During the second half of the 18th century the Kyivan Mohyla Academy, Chernihiv College, Pereiaslav College, and Kharkiv College were gradually reduced to mere seminaries. At the beginning of the 1760s the Kyiv metropolitan ordered philosophy at the academy to be taught according to C. Baumeister's texts based on C. Wolff's system, and thus discouraged any individual originality and intellectual independence.
Soviet period. In Soviet Ukraine, for the first few years philosophical activity developed in a normal way: philosophers expressed their views freely, formed associations, and published their own journals. In 1922 the government dismissed some of its ideological opponents from their academic posts and banished them from the Ukrainian SSR, thus warning intellectual circles that it would no longer tolerate criticism of the official ideology. Gradually the regime imposed its control over ideas by dissolving all independent associations and publications and by establishing its own institutions for defining and propagating the approved ideology, Marxism-Leninism. As political interference increased, philosophical debate degenerated quickly into servile dogmatism, invective, and denunciation. By 1931 all creative thinking on philosophical issues had been stifled.
Outside Ukraine. In the interwar period philosophy was taught in Prague at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute, at which the Skovoroda Philosophical Society (1925–30) was active, and at the Ukrainian Free University (UVU) by Dmytro Chyzhevsky, who established himself as the leading authority on the history of Ukrainian philosophy with his two monographs on philosophy in Ukraine, two books on Hryhorii Skovoroda, and a study of Hegel's influence in the Russian Empire.