Dymchuk A. The Philosophical Foundations of the Social Doctrine of Masonry

This work is dedicated to a reconstruction of the social doctrine of Freemasonry and the elucidation of its philosophical foundations in the context of the Masonic paradigm. The relevance of the present work lies in the constantly growing interest in the activities of the Freemasons and the demand for a complex, multi-level philosophical assimilation of the sociocultural phenomenon of Freemasonry from the point of view of its historical genesis and modern transformations in connection with this. The object of research is the social doctrine of Freemasonry as found in the totality of historical sources, stages of development and modern transmutations. The subject of this work is the philosophical foundations of the social doctrine of Freemasonry, which are reflected in its system of conceptions of its own goals and the function of the socio-historical development of humanity. The academic novelty of the results obtained through the research lies in the fact that this is the first time that the philosophical foundation of the social doctrine of Freemasonry as a complex of ideas, norms and values founded through a synthesis of the achievements of the ythagorean tradition, the Rosicrucian movement, Christian Kabbalah, and the doctrines of the ideologues of Freemasonry, including Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Albert Pike, has been explicated and presented in a synthetic totality. The basic substantive components are stated by the author in comprehensive form: a belief in social progress, founded on the development of a moral, free, emancipated ‘complete human’, in the rational harmonisation of all socio-cultural existence through true science and education, a belief in a Supreme Being / The Grand Architect of the Universe; certainty in the fact that man’s principal mission is the realisation of the Divine ‘construction plan for the world’, the fight with social entropy: ‘Ordo Ab Chao’; the Masonic Brotherhood is a model for the creation of an ideal future society of free nations, the best instrument for ‘construction and smoothing’. The main stages of the formation of the Masonic paradigm in Ukraine are detailed, and the influence of the Masonic system of values and orientations on Ukrainian social reality is analysed.