Hryhorii Skovoroda
Happiness is near and open to everyone: whoever comes to know oneself finds the invisible, true human being within, and whoever does the work kindred to one’s own nature lives in peace with God.
Placement
Ukrainian philosopher and poet, educated at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, who after leaving teaching lived as a wandering sage: in Socratic dialogues he taught that happiness lies in knowing oneself and in “kindred work” that fits one’s nature.
Key ideas
- Know thyself
- Two natures: visible and invisible
- “Kindred work” (srodnist)
- Symbolic reading of the Bible
Influence
Influenced by 1
Plato
influenced by ✓
Skovoroda wrote Socratic dialogues on self-knowledge, such as Narcissus (c. 1770), and drew on Plato for his contrast of visible and invisible nature. H. Skovoroda, Narkiss (c. 1770); D. Chyzhevsky, Narys istorii filosofii na Ukraini (1931); IEP “Hryhorii Skovoroda”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Plato › 428–348 BCE
Works
A philosophical dialogue that reads the myth of Narcissus as a call to self-knowledge: whoever finds the invisible, true human being within finds God.
Thirty songs and poems written over several decades on inner freedom, the vanity of riches and the happiness of a simple life.
Position
Skovoroda is on the map as the founding figure of philosophy in Ukraine: Dmytro Chyzhevsky’s histories (1931, 1934) made him its starting point, while Vladimir Ern (1912) and Vasily Zenkovsky (1948–50) counted him among Russian thinkers – a classification that research today reads in the light of the imperial context. He wrote in the bookish language of his time, a mixture of Church Slavonic, Russian and Ukrainian elements, and drew on Plato, the Stoics, the Church Fathers and Christian mysticism. His starting point is the Delphic “know thyself”: every thing has two natures, a visible, transient one and an invisible, eternal one, and the human being finds God by discovering the invisible “true human being” within. The Bible, read symbolically, is a third world that teaches this distinction. From it follows an ethics of kindredness (srodnist): happiness lies in work that suits one’s nature, not in wealth or rank. Skovoroda lived what he taught, which made him a figure of legend. Readers have asked how far his thought forms a system rather than a web of images and paradoxes, and his relation to Orthodox teaching remains debated; Chyzhevsky stressed his closeness to German mysticism.
Life & context
Hryhorii Skovoroda was born on 3 December 1722 (22 November Old Style) in Chornukhy near Lubny, in the Cossack Hetmanate, into a Cossack family. He studied at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, with interruptions, from the 1730s; in 1742–44 he sang in the court choir in St Petersburg, and around 1745–50 he accompanied a Russian mission to Tokaj in Hungary, from where he travelled in Central Europe. He taught poetics at the collegium in Pereiaslav in 1750–51, was a tutor in the family of the landowner Tomara and from 1759, with interruptions, taught poetics, Greek and ethics at the Kharkiv Collegium; in 1769 his ethics course met with objections from the church authorities, and he gave up teaching. For the last quarter-century of his life he lived as a wandering teacher in Sloboda Ukraine, staying with friends and patrons, without a post, family or property. His dialogues, treatises, fables and songs circulated in manuscript and were printed only in the nineteenth century. He died on 9 November 1794 in Pan-Ivanivka near Kharkiv, today Skovorodynivka; his pupil Mykhailo Kovalynsky wrote his first biography. The museum at his grave was destroyed by a Russian missile strike in May 2022.
Further main works
- Kharkiv Fables (Basni Khar’kovskiia, 1774)
- The Grateful Erodius (Blagodarnyi Erodii, 1787)
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