Reading Skovoroda’s Works: What Do the Texts Hide and Reveal?

Abstract

The article analyzes variants of interpretation of Skovoroda’s philosophical works as models of reading, and argues that the interpretation variability depends on the assumptions about the latent in the works, including the attitudes to texts, the subject, and the research goals. The latent (hidden intentionally or unintentionally) requires explication and consequent representation in each research project and takes different forms in each case. There are two alternative approaches to defining the latent. Some researchers use the ability of texts to convey more than the author has conceived, and by the way of juxtaposing the «details» provide evidence of historical and philosophical identification of the theory (the place of a thinker in the history of philosophical thought), reveal the facts of connection of the ideas with the historical epoch (Baroque, Enlightenment, Romanticism) and the personal life of the thinker. In this case, the text reads beyond the author’s will, since it was not conceived as the source of such information. An alternative approach is to adhere to the will of the author and treat the text as a meaningful and complete message, which has the necessary tools for successful communication. The latter approach is based on the trust to the text and its author, while the first one is based on distrust and trying to reduce the author to an object. The comparison of these approaches, as well as the recommendations of Hryhoryi Skovoroda himself («Zhena Lotova») concerning the interpretation of Biblical texts, draws attention to the role of experience and the figure of the author in the reading process. Biography in this context really allows to construct the author as the source of the message and to actualize the ethical component in relation to him. The analysis is based on certain theoretical constructs: latent in a text (H. U. Gumbrecht), intentional and unintentional revelations (K. Ginzburg), historical experience (F. R. Ankersmit).By comparing the role and significance of both approaches it is impossible to indicate preferences one of them, but it makes it possible to see differences between readers and researchers.