ABAI KUNANBAEV AND HRYHORII SKOVORODA: PHILOSOPHY OF THE HEART

Abstract

Spiritual traditions possess the capacity to spread endlessly across cultures, transcending the boundaries of time and space. They preserve continuity through the nature of universals shared by humankind and continue within the sphere of human spiritual values. As a result, individual cultures expand and develop. By studying such cultural universals from a comparative perspective, we may reveal the essence and genealogy of each philosophical category or discourse. One such universal concept is the concept of the heart. The heart is the central object of a field known as cardiophilosophy. This notion is foundational in Eastern philosophy and religious tradition. It is also present in Orthodoxy and Byzantine religious traditions.

This article analyzes the works of Abai Kunanbayev and Hryhorii Skovoroda in the context of the philosophy of the heart. It is well known that the concept of the “heart” occupies an important place in Abai’s religious and philosophical worldview. Abai employed the concept of the heart in a broad philosophical sense, understanding it as a means of knowing God and as a fundamental category of morality. The renowned Russian and Ukrainian thinker Hryhorii Skovoroda, a prominent representative of the philosophy of the heart, raised the question of the meaning of the heart as a key concept in his philosophical and religious teaching, examining it deeply from anthropological, religious, and epistemological perspectives.

Both thinkers, considering the role of the heart in humanity’s cognitive search within the horizon of religious and mystical knowledge, elevate the heart from the anthropological level to the level of the relationships “Human–God” and “Human–World.” The article also examines the religious and cultural preconditions of the philosophy of the heart in these two thinkers, as well as the shared ideas and the religious-spiritual origins of the cognition of the heart in Islam and Christianity.