Philosophy and Religious Studies

Contacts

Head – Vadym Menzhulin, Doctor Habilitatus in Philosophy, Professor

Building 1, room 314

Phone: (044) 425 60 11 E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Office hours:

• Monday: 13.00 – 15.00
• Thursday: 13.00 – 15.00

Instructor – Olha Bairak

Building 1, room 327

Phone: (044) 425 60 11 E-mail:  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Kyiv-Mohyla Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies was established in 1992 with the aim of providing Bachelor and Master studies in the field of Philosophy, as well as teaching philosophical and religious studies disciplines for the Kyiv-Mohyla students of all specializations. A significant role in the formation of the Department belongs to its founder Doctor Habilitatus in Philosophy, Honored Worker of Science and Technology, Professor Vilen Gorsky (1931–2007), who was its leader in 1992–2000. In 2000–2007 the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies was developing under the direction of Associate Professor Valentyn Gusev; after June 2007 the Department was chaired by Doctor Habilitatus in Philosophy, Honored Worker of Science and Technology, Professor Marina Tkachuk, and since September 2015 the Department is being headed by Doctor Habilitatus in Philosophy, Professor Vadym Menzhulin.

The educational activity of the Kyiv-Mohyla Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies includes Bachelor program in Philosophy and the Master program in Philosophy. The model of philosophical education introduced and successfully tested by the Department provides a combination of a wide range of humanitarian and natural sciences with professional disciplines, it also implements the results of the latest academic trends into the educational process. Professional philosophical training is carried out by the standards of the best domestic and foreign universities.

The convincing evidence of the high quality of professional training of our alumni is the fact that there are three doctors and more than thirty candidates of science among them. The students of the Department have reached success not only in professional research and teaching, but also in carrying out organizational, publishing, management, expert-consulting, design and analytical functions in various scientific and educational institutions, foundations, public organizations, publishing houses, etc.

Since the beginning of the its history the Kyiv-Mohyla Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies is actively cooperating with the leading domestic and foreign scholars and scientific institutions. During these years, the list of the lecturers at the Department included such prominent professors as:

• Paul Ricker (France, Politics and Ethics course)
• Taras Zakidalsky (Canada, Analytical Philosophy course)
• Roland Pich (Germany, Medieval Philosophy course),
• Alan Watt (UK, courses on British Empiricism, French Structuralism, Nietzschean Philosophy),
• Elizabeth Matin (USA, The History of Ideas course),
• Alexander Onofriychuk (Canada, Religions of the World course),
• Jose Kazanova (USA, Sociology of Religion course),
• James Young (USA, Christianity and Religions of the World course),
• Andrew Nakorchevsky (Japan, Religions of Japan course),
• Howard Biddulph (USA, World Religions course),
• Svetlana Kobets (Canada, Ascetic Imperative in Christian Culture course),
• Svetlana Vishnevskaya (Poland, Methods of Critical Historical Analyses in Biblical Exegesis course),
• Henrik Zimon (Poland, African Religious Traditions course),
• Mirko Vyske (Germany, Actual Problems of Historical and Philosophical Knowledge course).

For many years well-known Ukrainian philosophers were the lecturers at the Department. This includes: academicians of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Myroslav Popovych (Critical Thinking course) and Anatoliy Konversky (courses on Logic and Non-Classical Logic), professors Sergei Krymsky (Philosophy course), Anatoliy Kolodnyj (Religious Studies course), Ada Bychko (The History of Ukrainian Philosophy course), Tamara Yaschuk (courses on The Philosophy of History, Social Philosophy, The Philosophy of Economy).

The Director of the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Corresponding Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Professor Anatoliy Yermolenko has been the lecturer of Department for many years (Communicative Practical Philosophy course).

During the years of its existence, the Department had a great authority not only as an educational institution, but also as a research center which formed a powerful school of philosophy and the history of philosophy. The Department faculties as well as postgraduate and undergraduate students are involved in research projects, make numerous scholarly publications and take part in various academic events at national and international levels. For a long time, the Department had published two professional periodical series: “Research Papers of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Philosophy and Religious Studies (1996–2017, annually) and “Magisterium: Studies in the History of Philosophy” (1998–2016, one issue per two years). Since the year of 2018, the Department has been publishing the scholarly peer review journal “NaUKMA Research Papers in Philosophy and Religious Studies” (two volumes per year).

The Kyiv-Mohyla Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies has a long-term scientific cooperation with

• Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
• Ukrainian Philosophical Foundation
• Institute of Philosophy at Rzeszow University (Poland)

Since 2009, the Department is a member of UNESCO International Inter-University Network Culture of Peace through Communication based on the cooperation under the UNESCO UNIT UNDP / UNESCO Department.

One of the important directions of the Department's activity is the training of scientific and pedagogical personnel of the highest qualification. For the previous years, six doctoral (Dr. Habil.) and about fifty candidate (PhD) dissertations were completed and defended at the Department. In 2009, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies together with the Kyiv-Mohyla Department of Literary Studies developed and implemented an interdisciplinary PhD program in Philosophy and Literature. In 2016, a PhD program in Philosophy developed by Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies was launched within Yukhymenko Doctoral School of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.