Ethics of the Renaissance Age in Ukraine (the first half of the 16th century)

Abstract

In the culture of Ukraine in the XIII-XVII centuries. there are no treatises on ethics. However, there is reason to consider some reflections on ethical issues. If in the Middle Ages the norms established by authority or power always prevail over individual ones, then in humanistic ethics man himself can determine the criterion of virtue and vice. Little-known, or even completely unknown, mostly Latin-language sources now introduced into scientific circulation convincingly testify that the Renaissance, with its ethical ideals, did not escape Ukraine as one of the European countries. In Ukraine, Renaissance-humanist views on the role of man in society were formed under the influence of the doctrine of "human autocracy" known since the princely era and the relevant Western European concepts of certain thinkers of the Renaissance. In writing this work, the author relied on a theoretical and methodological analysis of the role of the ethical principle of autocracy in social processes in Ukraine, in particular, in the spiritual and ethical transformation of Ukrainian society.