THE SPECIFICS OF UKRAINIAN NATIONAL MENTALITY

Abstract

The study of Ukrainian mentality has paramount philosophical, ideological and scientific significance. It is important for finding practical solvation of current geopolitical and cultural problems, and it has theoretical significance for humanities. The purpose of the research is to identify universal and specific features of Ukrainian mentality in historical, geopolitical, socio-psychological and cultural contexts. Methodology. The article uses an interdisciplinary, comparative, culturological approaches. Scientific novelty. The authors propose to consider the peculiarities of the Ukrainian national mentality through the prism of a realistic and moderately nominalistic worldview philosophical paradigm. the Realist and the moderately Nominalist methodology do not contradict each other, and both can be used in studying Ukrainian mentality as a complex, multi-level, heterogeneous phenomenon, in which, along with monovalent dimensions, features of ambivalence and polyvalence are manifested. Conclusion. Studies of Ukrainian mentality mostly occur within the philosophical paradigm, which the authors call Realist. It means conceptualising the common features of Ukrainians’ mentality, inherent in the nation as a whole. Along with the said Realist approach, a form of Nominalist approach is developing, which emphasizes the specifics of the mentality of individual ethnic groups. Both approaches do not contradict each other, because Ukrainian mentality is a complex, multi-level, heterogeneous phenomenon. The mentality of Ukrainian people and its ethnic groups was formed in the natural-geographical, geopolitical, socio-psychological and cultural context. Each historical era formed its special features. In particular, cordocentrism is a feature of the Baroque era. In the era of Romanticism, the emotionality and subjectivism of the Ukrainian worldview were manifested. In the process of transmission from generation to generation, the mentality of Ukrainians undergoes changes, and therefore it requires both diachronic and synchronic analysis