Self-improvement through the prism of God’s cognition in the poetry of Vasyl Stus

Abstract

The personalistic ideas of Vasyl Stus in terms of the Christian philosophy are analyzed in the paper. It draws attention to the self-improvement in the context of God’s cognition as one of the general problems of the Ukrainian thinker. It elucidates topical issues, which are related to the human internal world and influence on spirituality of a forming person in the research. The general outlines of the Ukrainian poet’s work in the context of person’s interpretation in his correlation with God are considered. The issue of obtaining personalistic freedom through the interconnection with God is revealed. Furthermore, the personalistic motives of the world and human cognition, where God is the center of the spirituality, are studied. The tendency of appealing to God as the high moral ideal is followed through the works of Vasyl’ Stus. The Christian personalism of the poet is depicted via mediation that is considered to be a condition of God and self-cognition. The relations between a man and God reveal their meaning under personalistic perception in the works of Vasyl’ Stus. The Christian dimension of life is gained by conversion preceded by a spiritual crisis in the consequence of which a man has lost his positive attitude to the world and his place in it. Personalistic method of cognition became theoretical and methodological base of the study. It is recognized to be a universal mean of human and reality cognition that expresses the gist of such dimension as theism, has its instrumental status in personalism, having considered a man in the perspective of a unique personality as well as having determined the paradigmatic frame to personalistic conception in general.