CC BY
10
DOI: 10.24234/wisdom. v16i3.394
Viktoriia KOLKUTINA,
Lesya SYNIAVSKA,
Volodymyr POHREBENNYK,
Tetiana KORNISHEVA, Natalia IAREMCHUK
LITERARY HERMENEUTICS IN THE CONTEXT OF NATIOSOPHIC IDEAS
The article looks at the literary hermeneutics in the context of natiosophic ideas by H.-G. Gadamer, S. During, M. Heidegger, E. Smith, E. Said, D. Dontsov. It investigates the freedom-centred nature of nationalism, discovers new meanings of the concept "cultural nationalism", as well as the key concepts of the natiosophic aesthetics. The research outlines the natiosophic specifics of the interpretation system through the comprehension of the various concepts.
It sums up that nationalist interpretation is essentially natiologic (natiosophic). However, it is also literary, with the coherent semantic level of cognition. The evaluation here dominates over the formal-and-aesthetic level, which is quite common for such type of experience. Culturological aesthetics in the ontolo-gical existential dimension is deeply rooted in the nation's being. It has a pronounced nation-creating nature, targeted at establishing a national identity that is grounded on the national idea. Under the colonial oppression, it finds its expression in the interpretation of the fiction texts as a writer' s spiritual-and-worldview systems of values.
Keywords: hermeneutics, literature, nationalism, freedom, aesthetics.
Abstract
Introduction
tainly connected with the deep-laid sources. Meanwhile, innovative comprehension of the essential features of the Ukrainian literature results from the interpreter's focused and creative work. In fact, hermeneutics is the art of interpretation with the emphasis on the creative approach toward the explanation of fiction texts. Apparently, such work is not something that ignorant and indifferent person, who is lacking the drive for creation and is simple and unsophisticated, can ever cope with. Therefore, as a rule, a remarkable individual has always been placed in the spotlight of the researchers' study. Yet, the wish to
Natiosophic (also, nationological, natiocen-tric, national-existential, nationalist) hermeneu-tics that covers the immanent hermeneutic potential of fiction is aimed to interpret the national meaning, the essence of the cultural reality in terms of the methodology of explanation. It differs from the better part of the research production. New emerging meanings and visionary discoveries are distinct from the established meanings. Together with the exposed complex artistic-and-hermeneutic models and codes, they are cer-
dive into and discover authentic approaches and techniques, methods and methodology of interpretation and follow the analytical direction of the individual's ideas will always face the challenges of understanding the author's multidimensional inner world.
Nationalism was constructed as an ideology of enhancing, deliberation, fighting, and resisting of the nation. It is a historically determined system of the world view; a form of consciousness, implanted into the code of the mental-and-psy-chological, moral-and-ethical virtues, which are quite distinct from the good Ukrainian nature of peaceful, kind, spiritually weaponless buckwheat-sowers. It is a well-balanced strategy of application of the Ukrainians' intellectual potential that brings to light vigorous personalities, new people, capable of building the society, gifted with titanism, willingness to make sacrifices, drive to self-improve, as well as stamina and greatness. As early as in 1904, M. Mikhnovskyi was quite close to such definition of nationalism: "Nationalism is a gigantic and invincible power that has been emerging strongly since the 19th century. Its powerful onset crashes shackles that seemed to be so solid, and it ruins great empires. Thus, the new peoples, who used to perform their slave duties imposed on them by the barbarian winners, come to the historical life. Nationalism unites, coordinates the forces, drives for the fight, ignites the fanaticism of an oppressed nation in its fight for freedom" (Mirchuk, 1960, p. 23).
For the Ukrainian nationalism, one of the central ideas comprises freedom, independence, identity, liberating life of the nations and people in their own state - it is its goal. This thought is supported by the unbiased world philosophic and academic thought. For instance, E. Smith (1994) believes that nationalism is "an ideological movement to attain and maintain autonomy, unity
and identity of the nation" (pp. 80-82). Nationalism exploits national-and-existential methodology and sees the nation's being as its fundamental aspect - here, "it naturally comes from the philosophy of the national idea (speculative level of nationalism)" (Ivanyshyn, 2001, p. 14). It looks at the national identity as "vital and ultimate", given that "other types of collective identity - a class, type, race, religion - can overlap with the national identity and join together with it" (Heidegger, 1993, pp. 80-82).
In the spiritual-and-historical dimension, we speak about cultural nationalism - "the cultural doctrine of the nation and the will of the nation, as well as suggested ways of reaching national aspirations and will" (Smith, 1994, pp. 80-82). In the nationalist ideology, the concept of "cultural nationalism" gains new meanings and perspectives. The investigation of this aspect is the objective of our research. This manifestation provides for progressive power more than nationalism, seen as just a political doctrine, as the "cultures are more capable of fighting than nations".
Results and Discussion
In the philosophic-and-semantic aspect, the concept of freedom is seen as a collective phenomenon with the historic-national dimension. From this stand, a human-being "becomes free when he or she follows the mission that is sending them to the historical being. And by doing that, they come to discipline but not to the spineless obedience" (Heidegger, 1991, p. 232). M. Heidegger (1991) regarded that individual freedom and the freedom of the entire nation are integrated by the sense which is the truth of existence. It is the freedom that is realized as an essence of the existential bareness (truth). In this case, freedom emerges not only as a chance not
to fulfil something or fulfil something necessary but, in the first place, as the essence of the truth, which possesses a human being and makes him or her "existent" (that is "historical") (pp. 17-20).
In the context of our topic, we must place a particular emphasis on the risk of nationalism transforming into Nazism. It is a complex and dangerous mechanism with certain transitional links and precarious conclusions.
For instance, since 2014, there has been an intensifying trend of associating M. Heidegger with Nazism. After having read his "Black Notebooks", Western academia (R. Wolin, Faye E., and others) made a reasonable conclusion that the "dark side" of the philosopher's worldview lays in the acceptance of the Nazi genocide programme, which is vehemently unacceptable and intolerable. The ideological motive of Heidegger's studies is based on practising the cult of National Socialism as a conglomerate of constructive and creative forces. Even in the postwar time, M. Heidegger did not change or reject his belief. He was reasoning that he was not willing to find himself in the community of the Nazism proponents, who had massively changed their world-view paradigm for the sake of saving their careers. The philosopher believed that this was going to be his silent agreement with the allegations that he had a hand in the genocide, of which he had allegedly been warning about during his lectures. Such "chameleon" behaviour yet again highlights "changes and metamorphosis" of Heidegger's time-serving world view.
In the Chapter "Since the Provost period" of his "Black Notebooks", M. Heidegger emphasizes the necessity of "spiritual National Socialism", that, apparently, would add to the existing "regular National Socialism". The rhetoric of the former, however, was in line with the Nazi rhetoric. It produces the criminal algorithm of
"adding and transforming". As a result, the scale of the Nazism may expand and downplay the creative-and-cultural code of a nation. And no matter how profoundly the philosopher then renounced National Socialism, labelling it as barbaric and non-philosophic, in our opinion, he always saw the empathic motives and transforming potential in it.
Simon During (1996), the modern Australian theorist of literature, defines the freedom-centric nature of nationalism even more concisely. In his perception, a national ideology is a form of freedom: "Nationalism can retain a link in allowing us to resist cultural and economic imperialism, and stay outside the technology of nuclear war" (pp. 565-566).
H.-G. Gadamer's (2000) philosophic theory of interpretation argues that the main "task of hermeneutics is to clarify the "miracle of understanding" as "participation to common sense". "The first condition of hermeneutics" is the ability to observe that "something addresses to us" (pp. 271-272, 278). Meanwhile, in the theory of interpretation by D. Dontsov (2012), these "prejudices" gain a natiocentric specification. For the Ukrainian thinker, it is essential to look at the understanding as at the participation in the national sense and to start the process of interpretation with the realization that we are addressed by the national being in the first place. From this perspective, the essayist interprets the ability to comprehend the essence of the national ideal as the national sense ("the symphony of ideas") through the ability to hear the will "of the dead", the voice of the tradition, and the call of the national being: "Nation is something more than those willing to make a history today. It is a vast community of those who live and those who used to live. The latter are much more numerous than the former, and not all of them are sillier.
They are gone from our lives forever. Stepping down from the historic arena, they handed down to their children and grandchildren their views, ideas, and goals, which are to be reached by more than one generation, of course. Fighting and dying for the national ideal as they understood it, they, these dead, left to the descendants their numerous dreams, breakthroughs, competitions, memories about glory and impending revenge, gigantic power of the people's once active energy. It might be lacking a direction, but it has been pursuing toward reaching the national goal - an entire symphony of ideas, in which a sensitive ear can distinguish its sense. These are a number of tips, from which a thinking politician will extract an ideal of the nation, just like a mathematician can deliver a simple and clear solution to a problem by making sense of the symbols many can barely understand (p. 61).
Another prejudice of interpretation takes into account "the situation" in which the interpreter finds himself while being in the process of understanding. In other words, to understand "the sense and meaning of a text" the interpreters "cannot disengage themselves from their own personalities as well as from a specific herme-neutic situation they find themselves in". The object of such understanding is supposed to be linked "with this situation" (Gadamer, 2000, p. 301). From this perspective, for the national-existential interpretation, it is significant that the interpreter takes into account the national situation, which is "specifically hermeneutic". It refers to "the relevant tasks its national culture has" (Ivanyshyn, 2001, p. 39).
The cultural and spiritual horizons of the nationalism by D. Dontsov resulted in the author's transformation of the national-existential methodology of the text interpretation. Interpretation of its literary type - a nationally existential type -
determined a different approach to the interpretation of, for instance, poetic means, techniques, and even images, well-established in the Literature Studies. The poetics of a fiction text is known to comprise its fundamental components: the composition, poetic speech, stylistics, means of creating characters, a function of nature, artistic details, etc. that contribute to the coherent system of the author's artistic kit. From the essayist's standpoint, this "toolkit" is, first of all, supposed to expose the multidimensional range of the national sense of the writer. At the same time, its elements should communicate the pieces of his image spirit.
D. Dontsov's experience of the previous metacritical, biographical, and cultural-and-histo-rical contexts, as well as his worldview and style of thinking shape the foreknowledge (M. Heidegger). It makes it possible with a great degree of certainty to outline key aesthetic and theoretical-methodological ideas that define the type of interpretation in the literary essay works of the thinker. It seems instrumental to interpret this issue by appealing to the natiocentric type of the public world view and ideas of the Ukrainian philosopher and engaging the heuristic potential of such interconnected concepts as "nationalist aesthetics" and "nationalist hermeneutics", that in the natiological terminology are referred to as "natiosophic aesthetics" and "natiosophic her-meneutics" respectively. Moreover, we interpreter "natiosophic" in line with the researchers who see it as a theoretical-methodological, hermeneu-tic level of nationalism; as a philosophy of the national idea, or philosophy of the nation's being" (Ivanyshyn, 2005, p. 5).
Several essential features of nationalism should also be taken into consideration. First of all, "the roots, origin, genesis of nationalism in the historical experience of the people, rather
than in sociological theories" (During, 1996, p. 116). It is important to explicate this structured concept at the philosophic and idea-conceptual levels which are determinant for the interpretation: "At the philosophic level, it is a world-view system where the nation is ontologically viewed as the supreme natural stage of social organization. Meanwhile sociologically speaking, it is a subject and a driving force of history". At the idea-conceptual level, it is "the ideology of the national life", "each structural element of which serves to fulfil national idea and aims to ensure survival, recreation, and development of the nation under the specific conditions of reality". It is also "the ideology of the fight for national liberation, national establishment of the state of nation-focused state-like function, built on the ground of the national idea in the life of the people" (During, 1996, p. 117).
First, we will attempt to outline the main principles of the natiosophy by D. Dontsov as the theory of the beautiful, based on the nationalism as the philosophy of the national being. This aspect is significant as any methodological strategy is known to be primarily dependent on a certain type of philosophic knowledge. On the other hand, the literary-hermeneutic type of interpretation also depends on the peculiarities of the in-depth comprehension of the idea of the beauty of nature and art. This consistent pattern actualizes in the cases of the aesthetic hermeneutics by D. Dontsov. There is a reason why S. Kvit indicates, "The concept of the methodology is closely connected with the concept of aesthetics. For instance, the aesthetics of Gothic, Baroque, or Naturalism initially imply a certain way of studying a work of art. Same goes for a certain author's aesthetics, associated with the individual style. However, it is a methodology that emphasizes aesthetics - a theory, practically adapted to
the critical consumption, with its own system of rules and techniques" (Kvit, 2003, p. 8).
The aesthetic concept of the thinker stands out, first of all, thanks to its politico-ideological and nation-creating tasks, challenging the generations in the severe time between two world wars. Nevertheless, as modern researchers into Dontsov's works rightfully observe, "D. Dontsov's proximity to aestheticism and ideologism does not signal about his "tunnel thinking" and "totalitarity". It does not mean the intellectual was "motivated", but signals about his link to the life, particularly, to the specific political situation, which brought the Ukrainian nation to the edge of physical extinction" (Kvit, 2003, p. 4).
In one of his early articles in the re-opened "LNV", titled "Crisis of our Literature" (1923), the philosopher, speaking about the serious moral decay of the life and literature, outlines several aesthetic ideas, critical for the nation oppressed and dismembered among the four occupants. The ideas, first of all, were targeted at the art of the word. In his dialogue with the German volun-tarist philosopher A. Schopenhauer and ideologist Hegel, he differentiates two types of the beauty: calmly-harmonic, sentimental-quiet vs energetic, heroic, full of power, inspired by "the will to live". "Literature, the object of which is the life of nature and human-being, may treat them ambiguously. It can be excited about the beauty of the cloudless sky, snowcaps of the mountain peaks, miraculous harmony of the universe, and structure of the human body. Nevertheless, it can praise those forces, that energy that creates this harmony, those incomprehensible, elements, that faint noise, that subconscious willingness for life - all empowering the grass to grow, the sunflower to turn to the sun, the Earth to run around itself. These forces enrich the human soul with an impulse and passion that drive
them to face the sure death with a daring smile, to discover new lands, or to urge millions of their kind forward for the death to build the world empire" (Dontsov, 1958a, p. 47). Without questioning the existential value of the first type of beauty, the thinker, instead, expresses his concern about very scare representation of its second type in the Ukrainian literature: "Not without surprise, we discovered that the cult of energy is little known to us; that the religion of beauty is the only spread religion over here (...). Is it possible to find in this (Ukrainian - V. K.) literature the pathos of protest, the courage of Icarus, Prometheus, great passions? Blaming the satire, is there the curse of the triumphing fate? You are seeking all of that in vain in our good literary works! It is not there, and cannot be there as the lack of these emotions is inherent for the literature. The literature used to serve so one-sidedly to the understandable ideal of "beauty", so it was not aware of any other runners of the light and beauty, drive and energy" (Dontsov, 1958a, pp. 48-49). The elements of this energy aesthetics, its ideals are the following: heroism, effort, tragedy, overwhelming emotions, satire, activity (vigorous competition), fight, dynamism, etc.
The sentimental literature is saturated with quite the contrary aesthetic ideals: "The sense of being emotionally broken, the spirit of a defenceless paralysed person, inability to protest, the decay of the ability itself to want, impotent humani-tarianism, relaxing sentimentalism, decadent escape from the life - that is everything the literature has been living on thus far, everything where it could expand the range of its influence. Does it have anything to do with the concept of life? Can such literature reinvigorate the mind of the nation and make its heart beating faster due to the strong feeling? Can it boost blood circulation, awake the crave, strengthen the willpower,
attract the imagination with the brilliant hazes?" (Dontsov, 1958a, p. 66). D. Dontsov (1958a) also names two main reasons for such aesthetic disease of the new Ukrainian writings. The first reason is the internal, aesthetic. It rests upon the "the decadent understanding of beauty," resulting from the colonial status of the nation, "centuries of slavery and decay of any activity". The second reason is external, socially historical, typical for the dynamic era, the time of upheavals and revolutions that disagree with the "ideas of the passive humanity and unreserved daydreaming" (pp. 66-67).
The hermeneut believes that decadent ideas are seen as a dangerous moral disease, the virus of which, fortunately, haven not "corroded the entire body" for "the cult of the sentimental quietism is beyond the nation's traditions". The escape way is led by the revival of our existential and aesthetic national traditions, traditions of heroism that are relevant for accidental "gainer-predator spirit of the white race". This is the reason why "the dynamics and drive, the will of the previous centuries must be revived in our literature". "Only with the shift to the great memories of the nation", says the philosopher, "when it did not have to tolerate anything but was creative; when it was living not by complaining and dreaming but by the will and action - only with this shift, we can address the crises in our literature which is only a piece of a national-wide crisis" (Dontsov, 1958a, pp. 67-68).
In his other articles and essays, D. Dontsov (1991) elaborates and looks deeper into this flagship aesthetic conception. He gives the most profound insight into it in his works of the mid-1930s titled "L'art pour l'art" or as an incentive of the life?" and "Tragic optimists". In the former, the thinker criticizes the renowned theory of "the art for the art" as the theory of the people,
who are impotent in terms of their worldview. These people are afraid of making a choice and "cannot stand anything expressive, outlined, shaped". The essay-writer argues with the position of the critiques who vulgarised and simplified the idea of the famous aestheticians E. Kant, A. Schopenhauer, B. Croce, for whom it was really significant to interpret the beauty as something "objective" and, at the same time, different its tendency or world view - "will, passion, craving, moral" (Dontsov, 1991, p. 225).
The artistic work should have the idea-based sense, world-view, and philosophy of its own. An artist, just like a philosopher, evokes the ideas by using his or her unique language - "the language of images rather than concepts". The artist does not "persuade - he suggests"; it means it evokes, implants, according to Kant, "aesthetic ideas" ("the spirit" of the work), which comprise the emotionally loaded images, encouraging the recipient to think for himself. Meanwhile, the ethical categories of good and evil are replaced with the aesthetic ones of the beauty and the ugly. For instance "a bad behaviour" becomes a synonym to "an ugly behaviour" (Dontsov, 1991, pp. 229-240). These were not only Nietzsche or Hegel but, what is remarkable, Kant who became the basis for the Ukrainian philosopher to prove that we assess the art, first of all, "in terms of what the art means for the life from the viewpoint of its content; the viewpoint of what world perception, what "philosophy" a work of fiction came from; the viewpoint of whether the work of fiction enhances or weakens the vital energy, the power of our resistance". It is also indicated that the work of the authors with the passive world perception, who teach the addressees "obedience and submission", cannot be regarded as aesthetic or artistic works. This is the secret behind "infertility of the decadents' art"
(Dontsov, 1991, p. 242). Their aesthetics originates from the world view, dominated by cynicism, philistinism, hedonism, "mournfulness", etc. These concepts shape the content of the decadent works.
D. Dontsov (1991) finalizes another crucial aesthetic talking point as a dialectic existential law: the life shapes the art, and the "the art shapes...the life". This idea was shared by Oscar Wilde and Jose Ortega y Gasset. The Ukrainian author focuses on then up-to-date (interwar) reviews of Germany, Poland, France, and Italy that denied the aesthetics of "the art for the art". They claimed that the ideal of aesthetics included the drivers of life and aesthetics, which "would raise the entire generations on the great ideals". The role of the new literature was now seen in "glorification of the forceful personalities, people of strong will, the brave actions that would encourage the readers to pursue great goals, empower them with the faith in life and struggle". The thinker, while emphasizing on the human-creating, axiological, and history-creating missions of the art, indicates, "The art should shape our will and our nature, upraise some values and demote the others, produce the style of the era and individual" (Dontsov, 1991, pp. 250-251).
The focus on the meaning of the work, however, does not imply repelling the importance of the artistic form in the thinker's aesthetics. He insists that "one cannot disintegrate the form and content". However, in the author's critical literary practise, we can detect the trend of interpreting the content as an aesthetic idea, as "the inner fire": "The artist with an empty soul -"the one lacking the content" will never produce a marvellous form and will be unable to frame his work into a perfect form". Defining the axiom that the artist must master the form, "master the technique", the essay-writer also warns, "Yet,
the artist's soul that seeks the form for its dreams, thus the form for the amalgamated soul of the environment, is supposed to be strong and prominent". This is how D. Donstov (1991) develops the definition of the concept of the art, seen as the artistic philosophy of the being. Generally, it comes in line with the key aesthetic and hermeneutic theories by Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Dilthey, Heidegger, etc.: "The art is something different from the science of technique and form. Using its own language, it gives the clues to the eternal riddles of the being and destiny-the issues of the attitude of our Ego toward the world around, toward the powers above us, toward the death and love, toward the sense of life. It shapes and should shape an opinion; not corrupt it, not turn it into jelly" (pp. 252-255).
In the context of historiosophic theory by D. Dontsov (1958b) about the decline of the nations and states due to the decay of the ruling establishment, the psychological theory of two types of personalities ("predators" i "plant-eaters", according to O. Spengler) gained significant importance. They refer to the opposite aesthetic ideals. Such interpretation can be observed in the essay "Sancho Panza in the literature and life" (1934), where the undying image and character of the knight Don Quixote opposes to the image and character of his antipode - the weak-willed footman Sancho Panza. Panza as an incarnation of a common simple man, the essay-writer argues, may at times be even useful, but only in his own place in the social hierarchy. Yet, everything changes when this type of people, the people of "rent-seeking, carelessness, and a bowl of grosbeak", seek the role of the national elite: "...When an individual or caste with the mentality of Sancha claims the role of a state-founder, the disaster is coming" (Dontsov, 1958b, p. 145).
Generally speaking, it is quite easy to spot it
in the philosophy of D. Dontsov - he has quite elaborately developed nationalistic aesthetics as a natiosophic theory of the beauty in nature and the art. The key features of this theory are heroic nature, nation generation (shaping the "will" of the nation and its establishment), idealistic nature (fundamental anti-materialism), mysticism (divine, sacred nature), vitality (existentialism), spirit generation (ennoblement of a person), zero-tolerance approach, competitiveness (literature as a weapon), etc. When defining the nationalistic (natiosophic) aesthetics by D. Dontsov as heroic, non-romantic, T. Shevchenko-like, it is important to emphasize the action as its fundamental concept and continuous critique, targeted at the nihilistic (decadent) theories of the beauty. This aesthetic became the basis of the hermeneutic method of the Ukrainian thinker.
This is the natiosophic specifics of the interpretation system of the philosopher through the comprehension of the following concepts: political hermeneutics, national existential fore-judgement, national approach, spiritual -and- historical interpretation, post-colonial nature, Chris-tological interpretation.
No matter how nationalism is viewed - either as the philosophy of the national idea (being), as the ideology of "absolute power of the nation", according to D. Dontsov, as a nation-centric world-view ideological system, that looks at the nation as at a determinative factor in shaping the national individual, or as the propelling power of the people's history and the prelude to creating the national state (V. Ivanyshyn), - we always take into consideration a political aspect, this way or the other. Politics as "the state activity" (Morozov & Shkaraputa, 2000, p. 451) is a significant component of the national idea of any people, while for the state-less, oppressed nation it becomes the highest-priority concept. This is
what generates such relevant immanent presence of the political agenda in any aesthetics and her-meneutics, based on the nationalistic philosophy, world view, and axiology, if we should refer to the works by J. Mazzini, F. Nietzsche, I. Franko, M. de Unamuno, O. Spengler, V. Zhabotinsky, Yu. Vassiyan, Ch. Maurass, E. Yunger, I. Iliyin, etc. A noteworthy fact: according to many researchers, such as W. Dilthey, I. Franko, E. Fromm, M. Foucault, E. Said, etc., unconsciously, any humanitarian knowledge always depends on the power, specifically, the political one, and ideology of the social worldview.
Therefore, the researchers, who characterize the hermeneutic system by D. Dontsov as "political" or "nationalistic" hermeneutics, are not quite wrong (Ivanyshyn, 1992, pp. 136-137; Iva-nyshyn, 2001, pp. 97-106; Ivanyshyn, 2014). It is the cross-disciplinary interpretation system in the area of the comprehension of the word of art. It means that methodologically, the na-tiosophic hermeneutics is in dialogue with philosophy, psychology, sociology, historiography, religion, geopolitics, and other disciplines. However, here, we place the emphasis not only on the multidimensional philosophic interpretation, based on the national idea, or on the interpretation method, associated with the political analysis (all these aspects, too, are featured in D. Don-tsov's works). Here, we bring to the spotlight the literary cross-disciplinary methodology of interpretation, that consciously exploits the gnoseological potential of such area of culture as politics. Meanwhile, the areas of liberal arts are largely based on political philosophy and political science. Nationalistic hermeneutics in this specific case emerges as a type of political-literary interpretation.
The acknowledged modern post-colonial intellectual Edward Said, a Palestinian-American
cultural critic, studies the correlations "science/ politics" and "literature/politics" at the clearer methodological level. Giving a creative touch to the ideas by M. Foucault (in particular, not denying the fundamental role of the personality of the discourse-creating author) and other scholars and philosophers, he provides the fact-based critic of the imperial essence of the Orientalism cultural practice, accompanying it with the series of insightful methodological comments. For instance, when speaking about the issue of the "distinction between "pure" and "political" knowledge", E. Said (2001) argues "...Most knowledge produced in the contemporary West is that it be non-political... One can have no quarrel with such an ambition in theory, perhaps, but in practice, the reality is much more problematic. No one has ever devised a method for detaching the scholar for the circumstance of life, from the fact of his involvement (conscious or unconscious) with a class, a set of belief, or a social position or for from the mere activity of being a member of a society. These continue to bear on what he does professionally..." (pp. 21-22).
The American scientist gives a direct indication of the political-liberal, therefore, non-scholarly nature of denial by the Western academia the value of the political ideas in the area of the humanitarian knowledge: "...the general liberal consensus that "true" knowledge is fundamentally non-political (and conversely, that overtly political knowledge is not "true" knowledge) obscures the highly if obscurely organized political circumstances obtaining when knowledge is produced. No one is helped in understanding this today when are adjective "political" is used as a label to discredit any work for daring to violate the protocol of pretended suprapolitical objectivity" (Said, 2001, p. 22).
Therefore, the creator of any "systematic
statement" - the discourse (philosophic, academic, religious, fiction, etc.) - is expected to take into consideration its ideological nature: "...An individual cannot produce discourse at his whim or make a statement within such discourse if such individual is not involved - sometimes, unconsciously, but in any case involuntary - in the ideology and institutions, which guarantee his existence" (Said, 2001, p. 415).
Political nature of the literary cognition or consistency of political approach creation is rooted in one of the immanent (though probably not ultimate) functions of the art of the word, which is socio-political: "...Through the literature, the community learns how to respond, think, and gain critical consciousness, an impermanent image of itself' (Sartre, 1999, p. 258). D. Dontsov (1930) integrates this socio-political function with educative, ideological (world-view) ones: "Literature should educate, guide, and manage". He employs the following railway image as an analogue (which is quite natural for essay-writing): "In the place where the signal post was supposed to be placed, they (the reviewers of the "Visnyk" - V. K.) provide us with the railway system map and suggest travelling whatever direction we opt for». Meanwhile, according to the thinker, one should seek the guidelines for such worldview and aesthetic, literary education in the home-based cultural-and-histo-rical tradition. Such tradition is supposed to be concordant with the active stand of the West, as "their literature possesses something ours is missing: high tonality and variability of emotions, emotional tension and diversity, activist worldview and masterful form" (Dontsov, 1930, pp. 313, 307).
D. Dontsov is a political philosopher in the first place. Therefore the nationalist hermeneu-tics becomes his key means of comprehending
cultural, including literature, phenomena and regularities, that have a direct impact on the political being of the nation. Despite this approach being expressed not academically but as an essay, where figurative and intuitive moments prevail, he establishes an instrumental literary interpretation type - essayism. Nationalist interpretation is essentially natiologic (natiosophic); however, it is also literary, with the coherent semantic level of cognition and evaluation dominating over the formal-and-aesthetic one, which is quite typical for such type of experience. It is also inherent in ontohermeneutic, cultural-and-historical, sociological, religious-and- historical, psychoanalytical, archetypal, post-colonial, poststructural, and other approaches (Ivanyshyn, 2014, p. 8). Therefore, nationalistic hermeneutics integrates two processes. When searching for natiologic (natiosophic) equivalent of the literary phenomenon, cognition results in transcoding the idea from the language of art into the language of natiology (or natiosophy). Usually, this equivalent is based on the two processes: search, defence, and affirmation of one's own national identity and cultural-and-political realization of the national idea. Concurrently, there is a process of evaluation of the aesthetic values of a literary phenomenon.
References
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