Mykhnevych, Osyp

Mykhnevych, Osyp or Mikhnevych, Yosyf [Михневич, Осип; Myxnevyč], b 1809 in Lokachi, Volodymyr-Volynskyi county, Volhynia gubernia, d 2 November 1885 in Odesa. Philosopher. A graduate of the Kyiv Theological Academy (1835), he lectured there (1836–9) and was a professor of philosophy (1839–49) at the Richelieu Lyceum in Odesa and an assistant curator of the Kyiv (1859–67) and Warsaw (1867–71) school districts. In his philosophical outlook he was an idealist, influenced by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and to some extent by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, yet he stubbornly defended revelation as a source of philosophical knowledge about God and man. He wrote a biography of Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu (1849), a history of the Richelieu Lyceum (1857), articles on Greek philosophy (1839) and the nature of philosophy (1840, 1842), a logic textbook (1847; 2nd edn 1874), and a popular exposition of Schelling’s philosophy (1850).

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