Abstract

The author considers the key aspects of Nikolay Gogol’s philosophical attitude, mainly represented in the works of the last period of his life, and basic literary works. The fact that Gogol was a pioneer in many themes of contemporary art such as avant-garde, theatre of the absurd, surrealism, “the dehumanization of art” is well-known as well as his influence on existential philosophy. There is a necessity to overcome an asymmetry between literary and philosophical developing of Gogol’s creative work. The author distinguishes a number of philosophical issues in the writer’s creative work: individual soul ; connection of metaphysics with sociality; original understanding of phenomenon of entrepreneurship and management in Christian transfiguration of life; adaptation of Christianity to social relations, etc. The key idea of Gogol’s metaphysics may be defined as a statement of “problem of soul” which is a particular variant of the problem of consciousness. Artificial search of so called “philosophical grounds” of the writer’s “creative work” is not as significant as comprehension of the fact that Gogol as distinctive thinker went independently beyond literary bounds, overcoming literature.