Enlightenment Elements in the Thought of Hryhorij Skovoroda (Critical Essay‪)‬

INTRODUCTION The work of Hryhorij Skovoroda (1722-94), the most famous Ukrainian thinker of the eighteenth century, has elicited a large secondary literature in the two centuries since his death. (1) Soviet writers have generally described Skovoroda as a materialist and democrat. For instance, Ja. D. Dmiterko, I. A. Tabachnikov and O. V. Trakhtenberg contended that, "in the philosophic views of Skovoroda it is characteristic that ... in the last analysis his decisions about the basic questions of philosophy clearly expressed a materialistic tendency." (2) In like manner, V.E. Evdokimenko and I.A. Tabachnikov described him as "a Ukrainian thinker, humanist, democrat and enlightener who brought down his anger against the feudal system." (3) While Soviet authors had ideological reasons for depicting Skovoroda in this way, a close reading of his work undermines any effort to represent him as a proto-Marxist materialist and opponent of feudalism.