Interview of Vsevolod Khoma, Kseniia Myroshnyk and Olha Simoroz with Yevhen Bystrytsky.

The oral history of philosophy is in the process of establishing. The article argues that this discipline is fundamentally different from the oral history of philosophers because the oral history of philosophy has to produce besides the empirical data (interview texts) but also a theoretical reflection that is inherent in any form of philosophy. The core product of oral history is the living narrative of a witness, which is only a starting point for the oral history of philosophy that has (...) to work for philosophical generalizations. This article describes for the first time four possible types of reflection in the oral history of philosophy at the empirical level: (1) at the stage of developing the plan and purpose of the interview, when the historian of philosophy identifies the type of empirical data needed to achieve the primary purpose of his research; (2) between views of an interviewer and a respondent, when the interview appears as a common reflection between those two not just as an adjustable conversation; (3) at the reflection level of the respondent (if he or she is a philosopher) preceded the interview; (4) in the mind of the reader / viewer of the interview, who is able to actively rethink ideas expressed in the interview. Types 1-3 of reflection are central to the oral history of philosophy as a discipline (type 4 is not scientific and belongs to the field of public opinion). Consequently, the result of the empirical research of the oral history of philosophy is not only the empirical data itself but also the primary reflections that need to be developed at the next theoretical stage of research. At the same time, the oral history of philosophy can be both a source of data (that is a special interviewing methodology relevant to any type of the history of philosophy), and a relatively independent discipline, the history of philosophy study primarily based on interview material. (shrink)

Interview of Vsevolod Khoma, Kseniia Myroshnyk and Olha Simoroz with Yevhen Bystrytsky.

Interview with Constantine Sigov, dedicated to the history of the "European Dictionary of Philosophies": from the emergence of an idea in the early 90's in France until the accomplishment of the Ukrainian edition in 2019.

First, I love Greek language, a language which allow me to perceive what a language is, and what translation could mean. Then, I think it is because of Heidegger. At the time, we used to study classical antiquity and the pre-socratics through Heidegger and Nietzsche’s work. My own philosophical question was : « Is it possible to be Presocratic in some other way than the Heideggerian one? » The answer determinated my interest and passion for the sophists. I found it (...) extraordinary when I realized that Gorgias and his treatise « On Nature or the Non-Existent » presented a new way of thinking about Parmenides. If you are a Heideggerian, Parmenides is the origin of philosophy, the origin of thought. But very quickly, only fifty years after Parmenides, Gorgias came and said: « Look, what Parmenides says about Being, he could say about Non-being, and I myself can say it about Non-being. So, is Being an origin, an “Es gibt”, "There Is", just needing to be unconcealed? Or is it simply a product of Parmenides’ poem : Being is an effect of saying, and I can show it ». And he did show it, quite critically. This was my first insight. (shrink)