Abstract

The article is about metaphysical studies of Peter Linitskyi’s, a professor of the Department of Logic and Metaphysics in the Kyiv Theological Academy. For many years P. Linitskyi taught students of the Academy all parts of metaphysics. The author of the article examines all approaches to metaphysical issues that the Kyiv professor held. Special attention is paid to the arguments that P. Linitskyі used to protect metaphysics from attempts to prove its inability to formulate theoretical knowledge about transcendental objects – God, Soul, World. Deep analysis conducted by P. Linitskyi with regard to the purpose and task of metaphysics revealed different principles of construction and substantiation of metaphysical knowledge, significant impact that metaphysics of materialistic philosophy of that time had on metaphysics, as well as positivism, which despite all the criticism of metaphysical doctrine, showed a strong connection with and dependence on metaphysical principles and concepts of positivism even derived from metaphysics. A concept of “Matter” in materialistic philosophy, “the Unknowable” concepts of the positivists – all these doctrines meet the basic criteria of transcendent reality, which is the subject of traditional metaphysics. In his studies of the origins of metaphysics, P. Linitskyi draws the reader’s attention to those conceptual approaches that reduced metaphysics to psychical motives such as interest, curiosity, desire to discover new truths about “hidden” things, search for answers to questions caused by fear of death, egoism or altruism, intent on explaining transcendent things based on his knowledge. Not ignoring these subjective motives of metaphysics, Kyiv professor believed that metaphysics needs to be studied and explained more thoroughly, namely, what is a logical-epistemological and categorical definition of the subject of metaphysics, as well as the recognition of theological basis which lays in cognition of it. Only a combination of all these factors allows existence of metaphysics as a philosophical science. Article received 08.08.2019