The thesis is the first comprehensive research in Ukrainian and Polish scientific religious studies into Personalism by C. S. Bartnik, as a conceptual, internally arranged consistency of philosophical and religious views of the Catholic thinker, derived from philosophical and theological understanding and interpretation of the personality phenomenon in the individual, social and transcendental dimensions of his being. It is proved that the Polish philosopher, based on the Christian doctrine, has established an important philosophical and religious system of Personalism, in which a person is the axial and axiological category, while the interpersonal relationships (relatio), that determine both the existence of the Universe and beingness of a personality (either God’s, human, or angelic), are of crucial significance. A person, according to Bartnik, is the centre of transcendental and immanent reality. The entire reality draws its purposefulness and sense from a person, progressing towards impeccable existence. Consequently, Bartnik’s multifaceted philosophical and religious discourse is defined by the term person-centric in this thesis, which highlights innovativeness of the Polish philosopher as a representative of Christian Personalism.
The personalistic system of views of the Catholic philosopher is represented in the cultural and historical context of the development of personalistic thought; therefore, the author carries out a cultural and historical review of the national personalistic systems that appeared in the philosophical culture in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century. The genesis of the Ukrainian personalistic discourse in the ethno-religious aspect and the specifics of the development of Polish Personalism are highlighted, in particular.
The structural components of Bartnik’s Personalism as a multifaceted philosophical and religious discourse of a person’s existence are found out, organized and profoundly analysed in the thesis: 1) a consistently developed concept of a person, which outlines the individual, social and transcendental dimensions of personal existence, as well as the structure of a person; the person realizes himself in the world, using its components; 2) personalistic interpretation of existence, world, society, history and culture; 3) rethinking of the main sections of Christian theology within system Personalism; 4) hermeneutics, in which the fundamental basis of understanding and interpretation of existence is not intellect but a person. Based on the analysis of these structural components, the definition personal philosophy as an axiological linking centre of existence is coined to define the personalistic philosophy of Bartnik, which conveys a significant difference from the philosophy of K. Wojtyla; its essence is defined in the definition offered by P. Yarotskyi, the philosophy of a man as a personality.
In the philosophical discourse of Bartnik’s Personalism, the following aspects of reality are substantiated, such as existence, the world, society, history and culture through their connection with the phenomenon of the person as a universal category of cognition, which helps reveal their content. Hence, the core idea of the concept of history is defined, in which the person is a scheme and category of history and history is a universal model of human existence. The originality of the concept of culture as a metaphor of the Tree of Life is emphasized. It reveals the essence of culture, firstly, as a harmonious phenomenon aimed at growth, development and revival; secondly, as the personification of the transcendent-immanent integrity of the personal world (either human, angelic, or God’s) in its relationships (relation), as the one that bears fruit, namely, all the cultural achievements of humankind.
The author reveals the conceptual basis for the theological discourse of Bartnik’s Personalism, which is the category of a person as a methodological, epistemological and hermeneutic principle, which determines the structure of the universe and gives grounds for considering it in the perspective of an individual or a community of people. He proves that the philosopher's attempt to explain the Christian doctrine in the aspect of its key spheres in the language of Personalism, rather than distorting the orthodox content, is the democratization of dogma, not in the sense of simplifying it, but in terms of modernizing it in accordance with the mentality of the post-industrial epoch and represents a new model of scientific theological discourse.
It is proved that: hermeneutics, developed by the Catholic philosopher-personalist, is aimed at revealing personal reality as the way that allows us to understand the system of signs of the personal world. It is found out that the personalistic hermeneutics by Bartnik, in which the fundamental basis of understanding and interpretation of existence is not intellect, but the person that extends the boundaries of traditional hermen
