Basic interpretive ideas in works by Mykola Yevshan: propaedeutic outline

Mykola Yevshan was a celebrated Ukrainian critic of the early modernism era. The paper aims to outline the structure of his critical thinking, taking into account the evolution of the author’s worldview. The study is based on the specifics of ideology (as social worldview), axiology, philosophical and aesthetic dominants, which directly caused the methodological consciousness of the author. Thus, one may observe that M. Yevshan’s interpretive consciousness was rather integral but at the same time evolutionary, not fully constructed (considering the premature death), and not free of some inconsistencies. It is formed by six basic elements (and many secondary, auxiliary ones): aestheticism, individualism, sociologism, psychologism, vitalism, natiocentrism. The first (pre-war) period is marked with the domi-nance of the ‘esto-psychological’ type of interpretation (concentrated around the concept of aestheticism as a methodological key), while in the second (military and revolutionary) period the national philosophical interpretation, structured by the national imperative and intensified by the methodological principles of the national idealism, voluntarism, historicism (historiosophy), axiology, ideologism, psychologism, ethics, etc., prevails. The researcher doesn’t present his reflections as final and exhaustive, hoping, however, that they make two things obvious. Firstly, there is a need for more thorough and large-scale studies of Mykola Yevshan’s interpretive consciousness and thinking. Secondly, M. Yevshan should be properly presented in the history of the Ukrainian hermeneutical tradition; his aesthetic and national philosophical ideas need adequate verification and actualization in modern humanities, especially in literary studies.