The article deals with the anthropological views of M. Olesnytskyі, a professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy, whose creative work has not yet been properly studied. It reveals the connection of his anthropological ideas with moral theology and ethical doctrine, which he had taught for a long time in the KTA. Anthropological implications of the moral formation of a human person are also paid attention to, in particular, the dependence of the moral character on anthropological factors. In this context, (...) the writing considers Olesnytskyі’s views on the peculiarities of a person’s body-build. The Kyiv scholar focused on the principles of human corporeality based on natural conditions. In particular, Olesnytskyі stressed that it was the earth’s conditions that formed the bodily nature of man. The article also explores those religious ideas that influenced the anthropological views of the Kyiv scholar, which is quite understandable in view of his Christian outlook. Olenytskyі demonstrates the possibility of effective application of contemporary philosophical studies to the theological and anthropological analysis of man as an individual. In this sense, the conceptual connections of the anthropological views of the Kyiv scholar with the ones of the influential contemporary European philosophers and anthropologists, such as А. Schopenhauer, R. H. Lotze, F. Schleiermacher, E. von Hartmann, and others, become clearly evident. The article emphasizes the significance of the concept of the unconscious for the moral anthropological doctrine of Olesnytskyі; it also argues for the connection of this concept to the leading European doctrines of the unconscious, which were elaborated in philosophy and psychology in the second half of the 19 th century. (shrink)

The article continues and develops the experience of actual reading of one of the significant, but littlestudied works of the prominent Kyiv Hebrew scholar and biblical scholar of the last third of the XIX – early XX century, professor of the Kyiv Theological Academy Yakym Olesnytsky. Through the religious study reinterpretation of the structural elements of Talmudic mythology discovered by Olesnytsky, the peculiarities of the evolution of the agadic picture of the world were revealed. Being quite structurally heterogeneous, this phenomenon (...) is characterized by “human dimension”, which is the leitmotif of universal natural harmony, social order, moral balance of good and evil. Both the actions of God, and the elements of nature, and the norms and requirements of society are full of mental, psycho-emotional tension, placed in a situation of moral choice and action, appear in fact anthropological projections, the image of human abilities. Therefore, the anthropological aspects of the transformations of agadic consciousness have been studied from the standpoint of religious studies. The transformation of psychological and anthropological motives in agadic angel and demonology and ideas about the human soul is singled out; revealed dimensions of the sacred symbolization of the unity of man with nature, humanity and the universe in the agadic doctrine of metempsychosis; anthropological and socio-political projections of agadic sacred geography and ritualized practices of contact with the afterlife as with the “Other Reality” are demonstrated; the sacred dimensions of ethno-, cultural- and religious-genesis engraved in the agada are traced. (shrink)