The principles of liberalism and the problem of the nation building up in political philosophy of I. P. Lysiak-Rudnitsky

Abstract

The paper analyzes the principles of political philosophy of Ukrainian historian and political thinker I. P. Lysiak-Rudnitsky. The attention is focused on the joining up of the liberal theory of state and the Ukrainian national idea. It is shown that I. P. Lysiak-Rudnitsky follows the fundamental ideas of liberalism according to which the state exists for the sake of maintaining the personal interests of its citizens. But the persons in Ukrainian thinker conception are not separated one from another, they form the ethnic communities – the peoples. The peoples become nations when the persons realize the necessity to defend their common national interests by state. The state, which is formed for the defense of a certain nation interests, is to be a national state. Such state is orientated on the personal interests of its citizens as their national interests are personal from the point of view of their being the interests of a person belonging to a definite nation. So according to I. P. Lysiak-Rudnitsky conception the necessity of the national state is founded on the nations existence and the latter is no more than the manifestation of personal interests of those who realize the affiliation with a definite nation. The conclusion is made in the paper as for the resolving the contradiction between liberalism and nationalism in the analyzed conception.