Linytsky, Petro

Linytsky, Petro [Ліницький, Петро; Linyc’kyj], b 5 December 1839 in Okhtyrka, Kharkiv gubernia, d 25 June 1906 in Kyiv. Philosopher and theologian. After graduating from the Kyiv Theological Academy (M TH, 1865) he was appointed a lecturer there, later he headed its departments of the history of philosophy and, from 1887, logic and metaphysics. Influenced strongly by German idealism, he argued that reason, with its a priori concepts, is capable of attaining necessary truth about reality, and constructed his own philosophical system, which he presented in Osnovnye voprosy filosofii (The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, 1901). Philosophy’s conflicts with science and religious faith could be avoided, according to Linytsky, by restricting each to its proper sphere: science to sensible experience, philosophy to formal knowledge, and faith to a few revealed truths necessary for personal salvation. Linytsky also wrote a survey history of philosophical teachings (1874) and monographs on ancient Greek moral and religious concepts (1870), Plato’s theology (1876; his PH D diss), speculation (1881), Slavophilism and liberalism (1882), social activity and the origins of social organization (1884), cognition and thought (1895, 1897), metaphysics (1897), and the philosophy of E. von Hartmann.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]