THE RECEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION AS A WAY OF FORMING AMERICAN PERSONALISM : THE POST-SECULAR

The aim of the article is to define the way of expounding the authenticity of the experience of self-cognition opened by the personalist philosophy of the USA on the horizon of receiving the philosophical tradition established by B. P. Bowne to lay the epistemological foundations for overcoming the impersonalist modes of thought in the philosophical-humanitarian space of North America. At the emergent stage of the historical-philosophical process defined as its post-secular period the topicality of studying American personalism in the indicated aspect of its genesis is predetermined by developing the personalistic inspiration of post-non-classical philosophy into renewing the interaction of philosophical and theological discourses initial for the personalist thought and intended to reunite rationality with its spiritual sources in the course of reflecting the personal mode of being realized on the ground of theism. The further reflection of the meta-ontology of the personhood uncovered by the Scripture and expounded by patristic trinitology presupposes the retrospection of the trajectory of moving towards the Supernatural Revelation paved in the late nineteenth and the first half of twentieth centuries by the attempts of personalizing the ontology, in particular by the “personalized” ontological constructions made in the USA. The methodology of the research is based upon realizing the meta-ontological character of the problem of the personality revealed in the midst of the twentieth century by the prominent Orthodox theologian and philosopher-personalist V. N. Lossky. Taking into consideration the Biblical background of American personalism and its genetic connections with the denominations of Protestantism developed on the North American continent and the branching Protestant theology, the author focuses on both proper philosophical and theological reference points of this personalistic current of philosophizing in the historical-philosophical reconstruction of its genesis oriented towards the meta-ontological dimension of the personality. The scientific novelty of the study consists in initiating the reflection of the way of defining the inner experience of the self as the all-sufficient criterion of cognition which was paved by the personalist thought of the USA in the course of revising the classical rationalist models of the subjectivity and broke the ground for constructing “the personal world” in the space of rational consciousness formed in North America. On the base of analyzing Bowne's revision of Kant's transcendental idealism aimed at the explication of the immediacy of selfexperience the author reveals that such argumentation for its cognitive primacy transforms into affirming the mediation of the inner appeal of the human personality to living God by the outer interpersonal experience of rational cognition. The revealed regression to the rationally mediated relationship of the created person with Creator is connected with the restriction of the research for “personal beginning of all speculation” which resulted in the personal metaphysics of B. P. Bowne by the rationalistic tools of the personal self-reflection. The study proves that it was predetermined by the philosopher's confessional belonging to the Methodist Church detached from patristic Trinitology and Christology forming the arsenal of trinitarian meta-logic intended to expound the personhood as the ultimate principle of being. Conclusions define the resource of Bowne's idea of the “personal interpretation of experience” which inspired the subsequent “personalized” ontological constructions in the personalistic domain established on the North American continent. They form the dialogic space of the personalist philosophy of the USA predetermining the accumulation of its potential in the interaction with other philosophical currents. Manifesting itself as the personalistic inspiration of the emerging trends of thought this tendency predicts the focus of the further historical-philosophical research of American personalism.


The Topicality of the Research
The turn of thought marking the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries manifested itself as a transition from the ontological concepts to "the pre-ontological notion of being" (G.Deleuze).Performed by both deconstructivist and communicative trends of postmodernism such transformation of the basic frame of rational consciousness was initiated by comprehending the impossibility of objectivizing the personal mode of human existence transcendentally experienced as the communion with the Absolute Personality of God.Emphasizing the limits of knowledge established by the ultimate abstractions of ontology, nonobjectivation of the self was negatively proved by the failure of both metaphysics and phenomenology in defining the ontological status of the personhood reduced to the over-individual subject correlated with the depersonalized Transcendent Absolute.Formed in the course of rationalizing the personal spiritual experience, the depersonalizing tendency of the historical-philosophical process predetermined its mainstream establishing the metaphysical principle of identity of being and logic recoded into the phenomenological idea of "transcendence in immanence" and generalized as the object of post-non-classical critics.But poststructuralist and post-phenomenological attempts of deconstructing the foundations of subjective self-identity laid by metaphysics and phenomenology restricted the cognitive resource of its manifestation to recognizing the absence of the Source of being in the human existence.
Therefore, a person identifying himself/herself in the space of "post-metaphysical thinking" (J.Habermas) has been faced with problematizing "the subject's authenticity" (M. A. Mozsheyko) in the alternative ways of excluding the absolute criterion of verity from the field of the personalsubjective self-reflection.
On the one hand he/she could accept the matrix of the "split subjectivity" based upon realizing "the god of philosophers and scholars" (B.Pascal) as the absent "transcendental signified" (J.Derrida) predicting by his discursive transposition the nonfinality of signification intended to fix the ultimate truth but producing only the majority of its interpretations.Thus, the affirmed absence of the Absolute referent in the discourse equated to the existential reality predetermines the irreducibility of semantic difference factually making impossible the cognitive unity of the subject doomed to fail in becoming self-identical by this epistemological disposition.
On the other hand in the domain of postmetaphysics the created personality could realize the theocentric transcendental-dialog model of self-definition presuming the ethical perception of the other grasping him/her as a neighbor elevated to the Image of God ("It is as if God spoke through the face" (here and hereinafter the translation is mine -V.P.) [2, p.169]), but forbidding the intention to communicate directly with Creator defined as the unrealizable "metaphysical desire" (E.Levinas).Introduced as the main imperative of postmodernist dialogic such restriction of interpersonal relationship was rationally argued by denying the presence of living God in the human existence on the base of non-verbalizing His Absolute Personhood indefinable "in the categories of being and structure" [2].Supported by concealing the godlikeness of the self at the background of its attribution to the other this reduction of human cognition of God to the rational action separates the created person from his/her theistic basis making him/her unable to identify himself/herself in intersubjective dimension which does not provide the priority of the ethics as the meta-discourse of ontology eliminating the ultimate communicative situation ensured by the supernatural Revelation and the personally realized access to it.
Coinciding in the kernel vector of the problematization of personal identity deconstructivism and philosophy of communication indicated different lines of disclosing the ontological undecidability of the problem of the personality predetermining the initiatives of "post-metaphysical" thinking.
Derridian practices of deconstruction along with the other projects of post-structuralism such as M. Foucault's "genealogy" and J. -F.Lyotard's theory of "the decline of meta-narrative" formed the platform for realizing the discourse as the semiotic reality where "we are transformed into subjects and ... we transform ourselves into subjects" [22, p. 208] at the background of accepting both interior and exterior planes of the difference between the self and the other as irreducible.In such scope of comprehension the subjectivity was reduced to the transdiscursive position revealing the intention to seek for the ultimate truth associated with the personal-subjective self-identity.Deprived of any stability by expelling "the image of a primordial truth fully adequate to its nature" from the history in its deconstructive genealogical revision, the post-structuralist "speaking subject" indicates the infinity of this search by the changes of his/her self-manifestation influenced by interdiscursive relations and forming the diversity of the types of rationality with immanent "discourses of legitimation" (J.-F.Lyotard).Inspired by the antiontological pathos of the definition of the being as "the exteriority of accidents" [21, p.146], 'the ontologies of non-linear thinking" [6] laid the relativ-ist epistemological foundations for the radical reinterpretation of Christian concept of the person's self-overcoming aimed at gaining access to the truth.Proclaimed by M. Foucault, the appeal of post-structuralism to the self-transformation of the personal subject substituted the ascetic practice of Christianity providing the communion with the Absolute truth of God's Word [1] by the rational apperception of the infinite production of knowledge uncovering that any system of rules "in itself has no essential meaning" [21, p.165].In the space of postmodern culture characterized by worldview and axiological pluralism such mode of self-mastery contributed to "the multiple personality disorder" [17] exposing the exhaustion of ratiocentrism in the heterogenic cultural environment of the rationally oriented person's self-definition formed by post-modernity.
On the contrary, Levinasian ethical transcendentalism disavowed the ratiocentric primacy of the universal identity on the base of reflecting the self-identical personal subjectivity as "the other-inthe same".Initially marked by reconstructing the interrogative start of intersubjective interaction ("How, in the alterity of a you, can I remain I, without being absorbed or losing myself in that you?" [2, p.127]), this understanding of the personal-subjective self-identity revealed its metadiscursive character as for ontological constructs being conceptualized in the definition of the subject's transitive activity corresponding to both Christ's commandments to love.
Reactualizing the intention of the self primarily manifesting his/her subjectivity as the response to the other perceived as the Image of God E. Levinas considered the subjective responsibility to be "a more severe name" [2, p.43] for loving the neighbour interpreted as the only way for the created person to communicate with Creator "beyond the being" [2, p. 31].Evidently correlated with the Bible topology of the personhood as its restrictive interpretation (in spite of the philosopher's declarative departure from the foundations of religious consciousness [2]) Levinasian transcendental communicative ethics focusing on the responsible interpersonal relationship emphasized the superiority of the personal being taken as the neighbourhood of the other and the Absolute Transcendence of God over all the modes of its rationalization realized in classical and non-classical forms of ontology.Moreover the founder of the ethicalphenomenological version of dialogism achieved the threshold of the meta-ontological dimension of the self pre-intentionally marking it by the assertion of the spirituality pre-forming the nonreciprocal intersubjective relation of responsibility as the precognitive core of rationality.
But trying to avoid the absorption of the Transcendent by the Immanent in transcending the margins of knowledge E. Levinas restricted the personal-subjective self-definition by mediating the relationship of the created self with Creator by his/her encounter with the other.Prescribed by Levinasian imperative of the person's selfovercoming removed from Christian ascetics such reconstruction of the transcendental form of dialogue initiated the renewal of the rationalistic separation of both human cognition of God and subjective self-cognition from the live communication with Him.Accordingly, E. Levinas's thought did not grasp the meta-ontology of the personhood uncovered by the Revelation, expounded by patristic trinitology at the turn of Antiquity and the Middle Ages and disclosed for the rational consciousness of the modern era by the branch of the personalist philosophy appealing to Orthodox theology.
By the rationalistic argumentation of the introduced ethical prohibition the initiator of the postmodernist apology of subjectivity formed the premises for his own revision of hypostasis (υπόστασις) deviating from trinitarian correlation of this category actualized by the antique philosophical reflection with its companion ousia (ουσία) established in the same field of the philosophy detached from the Absolute truth of God's Word.E. Levinas defined hypostasis as the event whereby the self became an existing person limiting the impersonal generality of existence by the responsible relation to the other personal existent perceived as an image of the Absolute Personality of God.Expelling the immediate appeal of the created person to Creator, Levinasian deontic logic of the subject's positing diverges from the personal principle of being formulated by Trinitology as the dogma about God existing as "one ousia in three hypostases" ("one essence in three persons").
Generated to overcome the person's estrangement from his/her existence taking its roots (due to the thinker's Biblical allusions) in the fall and realized in the course of destructing the traditional worldview, the idea of the subject-forming "inversion at the heart of anonymous being" [2] generalized the experience of perceiving the broken ratiocentered mirror of the world but did not indicate the realizable pattern of becoming the personal subjectivity through the transcendent receptive grasp of the irreducibility of the personhood.Christ's two Сommandments to love on which "hang all the law and the prophets" (Mt.22:40) laid the foundations for the complete fulfillment of the created self aimed at the reconstruction of the sinfully distorted human nature and provided by his/her communion with Creator being the source of loving.Appealing to God the human personality paves the way of overcoming his/her sinfulness in the integration of Creator's aid and his/her own efforts.Such transformation of the created person ensures his/her comprehension of the Scripture testimony of human godlikeness and the trinitarian meta-logical explanation of the hypostatic mode of existence [1].On this base the human personality can accept the alterity as the neighbourhood realizing the common origin of the self and the other: he/she "is created by God like me" [7, p.356]; he/she "is not created in my image, but in the image of God" [7, p.356].Inspired by unconditional God's love for humanity the human ability to love the neighbour can not reveal itself without the communication of the created self with Creator.Thus E. Levinas's substitution of the vertical of interpersonal relationship by its horizontal deprived the philosopher's transcendental ethics of responsibility of its spiritual source reducing the self-definition of the subject establishing the responsible relation to the personhood of the other to the recognition of the unrealizability of the personal principle of being in the human existence.Nevertheless at the background of the deconstructive matrix of the person's multiple identity leading the subjectivity to the deadlock of interiorizing the outer semiotic differentiation between the self and the other recognized as the non-final indication of the absent "god of philosophers and scholars", the ethical-communicative model of the subjective self-identity surpassed the frames of inverting the rationalistic logic having introduced the ethical imperative of the intersubjective mediation of the ultimate communicative intention in arguing for the absence of living God in the actual reality.
Forming the negative argumentation for the inseparability of the cognitive activity of the created person aimed at realizing the sense of being from his/her live communication with Creator, Levinasian thought predicts the further development of its "personalistic inspiration" (J.Lacroix) through renewing the interaction of philosophical and theological discourses initial for personalism and intended to reunite rationality and spirituality in explaining in the immanent concepts of philosophizing removed from their "depersonalized" meanings the "constitutive transcendence" [30] of the human personality realized on the foundations of theism as his/her communion with Absolutely Personal God.Manifested in the field of the rationally oriented personal self-reflection in the late twentieth -early twenty-first centuries, the need of returning to the unconditionally-personal truth of God's Word ("I am the way and the truth and the life"(John 14:6)) initiates the current epistemological situation when consolidated by their strivings for restoring the unity of the human spirit, "the theology wends its way to the philosophy, and the philosophy is directed towards the theology" [8; p. 10].Marking the start point of the contemporary stage of the historical-philosophical process clarified as the formation of post-secular philosophy by its self-reflection [8; 23; 29], the initiative of overcoming the delimination between rational and spiritual dimensions of the personhood reveals the widening of the philosophical-humanitarian space of contemporaneity ensured by affirming the metaontological character of the problem of the personality explicated in the midst of the twentieth century by the prominent Orthodox theologian and philosopher-personalist V. N. Lossky [5].Having emerged in the sphere of reflecting the interpersonal communication, the philosophical thought of nowadays approaching the theistic basis of the personality takes roots in the soil of the theological comprehension of the ultimate communicative situation.Thus the main road-sign of the emerging dialogue between philosophy and theology is defined by the assertion of one of the greatest apologists of the personhood in the twentieth century: "And if there is a certain meta-ontology, only God can know it, that God, Whom Genesis show us during the pause in His creativity made to say at the Pre-Eternal Council of Trinity Hypostases: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" [4, p. 411].Such transformation of the rationalistic aspect of the personal self-cognition presupposes reviewing the trajectory of moving towards the Revelation paved in the late 19th -mid-20th centuries by the philosophical reflection aimed at personalizing the ontology.
The idea of constructing the ontological system disclosing the personal principle of being was actualized at the end of the nineteenth -the beginning As the basic intention of the personalist philosophy of the USA it initiated the reception of the philosophical tradition directed at restoring its origins associated with the personally oriented modes of thinking.This way of forming American personalism along with its Protestant basis devoid of dogmatic stability predicted the dialogue openness and liberality of this national-historical type of philosophizing and its viability manifesting itself not only through the contribution into forming non-classical paradigm of philosophy, but also through inspiring the self-transformation of post-non-classical philosophical thought.Realized as the inherent form of the self-organization characteristic of "the first complete and comprehensive system of philosophy developed in America" [15], its reinterpretation of philosophical classics has being predetermined the focus of both self-reflection of this personalist branch of philosophizing and its historicalphilosophical retrospective giving rise to the academical history of the personalistic ideas.
But all the four generations of the adherents of the original version of American personalism involved in reconstructing its genesis, from Albert Cornelius Knudson (1873Knudson ( -1953) ) to Thomas Oliver Buford (b. in 1932), represent the process of receiving the philosophical tradition by the personalist thought awaken on the North American continent as actualizing the potential of personalistic thinking accumulated by the philosophy itself [14; 15; 16; 18; 20; 26].The European Catholic interpreters of the philosophical doctrine of the personality formed in the USA -Czeslaw Stanislaw Bartnik (b. in 1929) and Bogumil Zygmunt Gacka (b. in 1955) -share this viewpoint and argue for it [10; 25].As a result the theological nature of the withdrawal from the abstractness of ontology performed by American personalism remains unclarified for both historians of philosophy focusing on the formation of this national branch of the personalist reflection and philosophers appealing to the personalistic constructs to provide the self-renewal of rational consciousness by laying the foundations for post-secular type of philosophizing.
The only exception was made by the Swedish scholar J. O. Bengtsson, known as an authoritative expert in the history of ideas, in the monograph "The Worldview of Personalism: Origins and Early Development" (2006, revised in 2011) in which he emphasized Bowne's affirmation of "the validity of personal knowledge" in the course of correlating "personal reason" with "impersonal understanding" [11].But concentrating on the influence exerted on the originator of the personalist philosophy of North America by the personalistic tradition of philosophizing formed in the Old World the most eminent contemporary reviser of the philosophical doctrines of the personality deviated from revealing the explicit relatedness of the concept "self-experience" used by B. P. Bowne as an indicator of "the personal implication" with the Bible topology of the personhood.Thus the question about the way of overcoming "the fallacies of abstractions" [19] paved by American personalists has not been answered yet.

The Aim of the Research
The study is aimed at defining the criterion of self-cognition established by the personalist thought of the USA in the course of revising the classical rationalist models of the subjectivity and breaking the ground for constructing "the personal world" in the space of rational consciousness formed in North America.Taking into consideration the Biblical background of American personalism [9; 10; 11; 14; 25; 28] and its genetic connections with the denominations of Protestantism developed on the North American continent and the branching Protestant theology [15; 25; 28], the author focuses on both proper philosophical and theological reference points of this personalistic current of philosophizing in the historicalphilosophical reconstruction of its genesis oriented towards the meta-ontological dimension of the personality.

The Exposition of the Basic Research Material
Actualized by the classical versions of personalism as a way of conceptualizing the personal principle of being grasped through the access to God's Word, the idea of pouring the new wine in the old bellows of philosophy was embodied more consistently in the American personalistic doctrine than in the French philosophical trend affirming the personality as the ontological, epistemological and axiological ultimate "of all reality" [30].In contradistinction to the radical departure from the ratiocentric mainstream of philosophizing declared in the 1930s in France as an European start of the personalist reaction against impersonalist modes of thought, the apology of the personhood initiated at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the USA was based upon the revision of the philosophical tradition intended to overcome its impersonalistic tendencies.
Avoiding the absolute rejection of the rationalistic scope of the subjective self-definition articulated by the leading French personalists Emmanuel Mounier (1905Mounier ( -1950) ) and Jean Lacroix (1900 -1986) to eliminate "the dead forms which oppress even eternal values..." [27], the reception of metaphysical and primary (Kantian) phenomenological frames of the subjectivity awakening the personalistic trend in America inspired the repersonalization of the fundamental principles of rational consciousness revealing itself in the course of performing the task "to form the right habits of thinking" [12].Formulated by Borden Parker Bowne, an outstanding philosopher, Methodist Minister and theologian recognized as the father of American personalism and the originator of its Bostonian hub, this intention was directed not against the cognitive subject's core itself but against the reduction of the cognitivity to the impersonal archiform.
The initial self-manifestation of the personalist philosophy of the USA disclosed its presumption of "primordial personalism" [12] and predetermined reinforcing the tools of philosophizing by the arsenal of theology in the course of the explanation of the irreducibility of the personhood which resulted in the doctrine of the personality representing the climax of the personalistic movement on the North American continent.Realizing the "shortcomings of impersonal philosophy" destroying the foundations of philosophizing as the results of "the misleading abstractions and aberrations with which the history of thought abounds" [12, p. vi], B. P. Bowne warns: "...when our fundamental philosophic principles are impersonally and abstractly taken, they disappear either in contradiction or in empty verbalism" [12, p.211].Such perception of the impersonalist forms of thinking implies the idea of the primary personal metaphysics was developed throughout the works of the thinker declaring himself "...a Personalist, the first of the clan in any thoroughgoing sense" [25] and predicted both subsequent personalized variants of ontology constructed in the philosophicalhumanitarian space of the USA and "inner vision" of the genealogy of American personalism.
It is obvious that Bowne's correlation of the starting point of philosophizing with the comprehension of "personal beginning of all speculation" [12, p.vi] was inspired by his receiving the Scripture topoi of the personhood and the views of his European teacher, German philosopher Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817 -1881), the apologist of returning the philosophical reflection to the "wholeness of the spirit".But the explication of the primary insight of the "personal world" given by the metaphysician-personalist in his final work Personalism (1908) reveals the impact of the positivist doctrine founded by Auguste Comte (1798 -1857) on the formation of the personalistic trend of philosophy in North America.
In the Preface to the treatise generalizing the author's position as "personalism" and attaching this term to the American philosophical discourse B. P. Bowne recognized Comte's rightness in asserting the historical primacy of the causal "explanation in terms of personality" determined by the theological character of "the first stage of human thought" [12, vi -vii].Moreover the progenitor of the Boston personalist school stated that A. Comte was right regarding the "abstract conceptions of being, substance, cause, and the like" representing the next, "positively" defined as metaphysical, stage of knowledge as "the ghost[s] of earlier personal explanations" [12, vi -vii].To argue for such understanding of ontological abstractions B. P. Bowne appealed to the generalized and anonymous personalistic experience of philosophizing.He underlined: "Later philosophic criticism has shown that the conceptions of impersonal metaphysics are only the abstract forms of the self-conscious life, and that apart from that life they are empty and illusory" [12, vi].
But simultaneously the philosopher-personalist criticized the founder of positivism for eliminating the causality from the sphere of cognition in his general representation of its stage-wise development.Appealing to the dynamics of the historicalphilosophical process B. P. Bowne affirmed: "Causal inquiry, though driven out with a fork, has always come running back, and always will" [12, vii].Accordingly to Bowne's amplification such cyclic recurrence of thought proves that comprehending the causality is the final goal of the cognitive activity of the human person which can not be excluded from the sphere of his/her self-definition and self-fulfillment.Therefore the author of the most famous manifestation of the personalist phi-losophy of the USA emphasized: "It only remains to give the causal doctrine the form which is necessary to free it from the objections of criticism" [12, vii].
Summing up the revision of Comte's positivist theory, B. P. Bowne motivated the development of the personalistic thinking in the domain of philosophizing established on the North American continent in such a way:" ... abstract and impersonal metaphysics is a mirage of formal ideas, and even largely of words, which begin, continue, and end in abstraction and confusion.Causal explanation must always be in terms of personality, or it must vanish altogether.Thus we return to the theological stage, but we do so with a difference.At last we have learned the lesson of law, and we now see that law and will must be united in our thought of the world.Thus man's earliest metaphysics reemerges in his latest; but enlarged, enriched, and purified by the ages of thought and experience" [12, vii].
Bowne's alternative to the progressive trilogy of knowledge formed by A. Comte is based upon comprehending the initial -theological -stage of cognition as the period of forming the primary personal metaphysics.Such equalizing of religious and philosophical consciousness accents the relatedness of these forms of the life of the human spirit in the aspiration for defining the causality and overlooks the actual divergence of the ways of realizing the ultimate cognitive intention opened by religion and philosophy.At the background of the confessional belonging of B. P. Bowne to Methodism possessing liberal and changeable multipartite doctrine his initiative of retrospectively reuniting spiritual and rational dimensions of the personhood can not be reduced to the contamination of the different notions; it should be realized as the argument for personalizing the ontology in the perspective of reflecting the inner personal experience taken in its restricted semi-Catholic -semi-Protestant explication as the all-sufficient criterion of cognition.
Connecting the rationality with the Bible testimony of human godlikeness the return of philosophical reflection to the transcending selfexperience initiated by the father of American personalism broke the ground for overcoming "the failure of impersonalism" [12] in the course of comprehending "the image of unconditional being … really given to the human person by the nature of his personality" [5, p.265-266] and marking the irreducibility of the personhood.But the Methodist horizons of perceiving the Supernatural Revelation remote from patristic Trinitology and Christology predetermined the limitation of Bowne's field of vision of the hypostatic mode of existence.Detached from the resource of trinitarian meta-logic ensuring the comprehension of the personal principle of being through the correlation of the person's self-cognition with the human cognition of God, the philosopher-apologist of the personality tried to define the epistemological foundations of constructing "the latest metaphysics" in the course of the rethinking of Kant's transcendental idealism aimed at the rational explication of the understanding of the personhood formed on the basis of theism.
Having failed to conceptualize the transcendentally experienced communion of the created person with Creator as the priority of the personal selfdefinition B. P. Bowne connected the ultimate explanation of the phenomenal experience intended to transcend it with "a personal interpretation of experience", the first step to which "consists in the insight that we are in a personal world from the start, and that the first, last, and only duty of philosophy is to interpret this world of personal life and relations" [12, p.vi].Thus Bowne's thought prescribes to begin the philosophical reflection directed at affirming "the certainty of selfexistence" [12] (obvious for theology) as the metaphysical statement not with appealing to the Absolute Personality of God but with realizing "the primacy of the personal world" where "we and the neighbors" are defined as "facts which cannot be questioned" [12, p. 20].Indicating the personalsubjective perception of "the other" by using the concept "neighborhood" included in the topology of the personhood uncovered in God-Breathed Book, such formulation of the primary intention of the "enlarged, enriched, and purified" personal metaphysics implies renewing the rationalistic separation of the human cognition of God and selfcognition from the living experience of communication with Him.
Problematized by this definition of the factual primacy of philosophizing the reunion of theological and metaphysical modes of thinking declared by B. P. Bowne is perceived as hardly achievable in the context of his prioritizing the cognitive role of the self-experience which due to philosopher's amplification goes beyond sensually experienced data to include "the data of self-consciousness" [12, p.99-102].
The thinker starts clarifying his position with revealing "the first experiential fact" indicated by him as "the validity of our personal knowledge" including "our mutual understanding of one another" [12, p.80].To define the otherness as the indicator of the personal-subjective truth the philosopher-personalist analyzes the rational aspect of interpersonal relations in the course of revising Kantian system of phenomenal knowledge.B. P. Bowne underlines: "If we make the world of things subjective presentations because the knowledge of them arises through our mental construction, we must do the same thing with the world of persons, for the knowledge of them has an equally subjective character.Kant passes from the "me" to "us" without telling us how he makes the transition.He really begins with "us" -not merely with the individual self, but with the whole collection of individual human beings -and gets an experience valid for us all in exceedingly obscure ways" [12, p. 84].According to Bowne's thought, not "to end in solipsism" the reflection of this problematic trajectory should recognize: "The basal certainties in knowledge are ... the coexistence of persons, the community of intelligence and the system of common experience.And these are not given as speculative deductions, but as unshakable practical certainties" [12, p. 127 -128].Directed against Kantian reduction of the plurality of personal minds defined as phenomenal selves to the unity of the transcendental subject, such assertion of the factuality of cognition results in the negation of the phenomenological character of the empirical self.B. P. Bowne affirms that the experienced "living, conscious, active" self is not a phenomenon, but the most concrete reality.On the contrary, the transcendental ego, understood as separate from this self, is a mere "fiction" [12, p. 86, 88].Stating that the "self-existence is the surest item of knowledge we possess" [12, p. 86-88], the originator of the personal metaphysics of the modern era reveals the fundamental evidence of this personal-subjective reality in the certainty of the self "as the subject of the mental life and knowing and experiencing itself as living, and as one and the same throughout its changing experiences" [12, p. 86 -88].
Bowne's statement of the cognitive priority of "the inner experience of the conscious self" [12, p. 99-102] develops into the attempt of bridging the gap between the ratio and the world taking roots in the fallen human nature and widened in the noumenal/phenomenal distiction introduced by I. Kant to explain the mind's activity in abstraction from the self-experience.Taking into consideration Kant's scheme of constructing the intelligible objects, B. P. Bowne asserts that the categories considered to be the preconditions of experience become the categories of reality deriving their true meaning from "living self-experience" [12, p.99-102] which is immediate in contradistinction to outer perception.On the base of such transformation of the fundamental presumption of classical phenomenologism the leader of American personalists focuses on revealing the correlation of the basic philosophical concepts with the inner personal experience and uncovers the metaphysical implications of personalism in the course of reinterpreting the categorial semantics of identity, unity, causality and plurality.
Regarding the category of identity, B. P. Bowne concludes, that it "is given as the selfequality of intelligence throughout experience'" and that "any other conception destroys itself" [12, p.99-102].
Providing the analysis of the category of unity, the philosopher emphasizes that it "may be purely formal, as when we call a thing one; but when we come to real unity only experience can tell us whether it be possible and what form it must take on" [12, p.103].The metaphysician-personalist denies the relatedness of this category with spatiotemporal phenomena attributing its true meaning to the self-identical personality: "There can be no real unity in anything existing in space and time, for in that case everything would be dispersed in infinite divisibility.We find the problem solved only in the unity of a conscious self, which is the only concrete unity that escapes the infinite dispersion of space and time" [12, p.103].Moreover, due to Bowne's amplification, the unity of the self is inseparable from the plurality in the concrete, conscious experience.Detached from "an abstract unity without distinction or difference", the plurality forms an aspect of "a living, conscious unity, which is one in its manifoldness and manifold in its oneness" [12, p.261-262].The thinker underlines that such connection of unity and plurality is contradictory only for the formal, discursive thought, "taken concretely it is the fact of consciousness" [12, p.261-262].
The inner vision of the personhood formed in this field of personalizing the metaphysical categories predicts transcending the limits of personal identity and unity marked by the interiorization of the experience of "the other".Thus B. P. Bowne should recognize: "If personality is to maintain its integrity, it must be kept "a handbreadth off", both from the Absolute and from things" [12, p.113-144, 166].According to his personalist position the philosopher affirms that the category of causality can not be thought "abstractly and impersonally".But Bowne's detachment from patristic theology determined by his devotion to Methodism deprived him of the trinitological arsenal of expounding the meta-ontological dimension of the personhood disclosed by the Supernatural Revelation as the communion of the human person with Absolutely Personal God.Therefore the thinker restricted by the rationalistic tools of the personal self-reflection connects performing the ultimate cognitive intention with realizing the true meaning of causality in "the self-conscious causality of free intelligence" [12, p.103-104].B. P. Bowne asserts that the experienced phenomenal order mediates a real content knowable by "our categories", because it is preconditioned by "a Supreme Intelligence which manifests his thought through it and thus founds that objective unity of the system of experience which is presupposed in all our knowing" [12, p.78, 89].In this way the philosopher's argumentation for the immediacy of the self-experience transforms into affirming the mediation of the inner appeal of the created person to Creator by the outer interpersonal experience of rational cognition.Restricting the sphere of the personal self-definition, such regression of the personalist thought to the rationalized perception of living God problematizes the prospect of personalizing the ontology opened by declaring the authenticity of the inner self-conscious experience the main landmark for philosophical reflection.
But in spite of the revealed sources of the selfproblematization, Bowne's "personal metaphysics" founded the Boston tradition of the personalist philosophy developed by his disciples Edgar Sheffield Brightman (1884-1953), Francis John McConnell (1871-1953), George Albert Coe (1861-1951) and Ralph Tyler Flewelling (1871-1960) known as the founder of the second important North American center of personalism in the University of Southern California.Having adopted their teacher's experience of philosophizing "in terms of personality", these thinkers expanded the horizons of revising the philosophical classics established at the start of the personalistic movement in the USA by correlating Platonic and Kantian traditions.Moreover the idea of the "personal interpretation of experience" generated in the Bostonian cradle of American personalism supported Howison's and Royce's initiatives of rethinking the principles of classical philosophy.The doctrine of "personal idealism" elaborated by G. H. Howison predetermined the basis of the personalist school formed at the University of California, Berkeley, while the reinterpretation of Hegelian concept Absolute made by J. Royce inspired the development of the personalistic tendencies at Harvard University.Joining the revision of depersonalized definitions of the subject, Harvardian scholars William Ernest Hocking (1873Hocking ( -1966) ) and Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) manifested themselves as personalists.
Forming the dialogic space of American personalism its reception of the philosophical tradition exposed the contradictory character of the attempts of reuniting rationality and spirituality initiated by B. P. Bowne and based upon his reducing the spiritual core of the personhood to the personalized ratio.
On the one hand, Bowne's adherents focusing on researching for proper philosophical origins of the personalist thought affirm that the comprehension of the personality as an ultimate reality has become the main result of the previous historicalphilosophical process.Conceptualizing such vision of the genesis of personalism, A. C. Knudson asserts that it is "the ripe fruit of more than two millenniums of intellectual toil, the apex of a pyramid whose base was laid by Plato and Aristotle."[26, p. 34].Developing Knudson's teleological conception of rising the personalist philosophy R. T. Flewelling connects the starting point of "primordial personalism" with the early history of ideas:"It is, in basic principle, as surely expressed in the affirmation of Heraclitus (536 -470 B.C.) that the fundamental reality is mind because it alone, of all creation, has the power to differentiate itself from the objective world and even from its own experiences, asserting that this Logos is the permanent principle in a world of change.Anaxagoras (500 -430 B.C.) showed the same personalistic trend in affirming mind to be the foundation of existence, the force that arranges and guides.Protagoras (480 -410 B.C.) named this differentiating capacity of the person as the basis of all knowledge and science, expressing it in the famous phrase: "Man is the measure of all things, of things that are, that they are; of things that are not, that they are not" ІСТОРІЯ ФІЛОСОФІЇ doi 10.15802/ampr2016/72246 © Patsan V. O. (Bishop Eulogius of Novomoskovsk), 2016 [20, p.21].
On the other hand, the further conceptualization of self-experience performed in the discursive field generated by the "personal world" of B. P. Bowne affirms his suggestion of "an unformulated activity of the mind which is the real gist of the reasoning" [13, p.36, 259-262].Analyzing the resource of philosophical reflection intended to explicate "the ethical demand for an ethical Creator" [13, p.259-262], associated in Bowne's amplification with "living participation in the moral effort and struggle of humanity" [13, p. 259-262], W. E. Hocking states that "the philosophy can not lead to religion, because it can not lead us to the knowledge of God, and above all ... the philosophy will never be able to create a God who is worshiped" [24, p.97].
Inspiring the further dialogue with the other branches of philosophizing such divergence of the personal experiences of perceiving the philosophical tradition proves that the personalist philosophy founded in North America in the late nineteenthearly twentieth centuries has not exhausted its potential.Thus the history of American personalism is to be continued.

The Scientific Novelty
The article initiates reconstructing the way of defining the authenticity of the experience of selfcognition opened by the personalist philosophy of the USA on the horizon of receiving the philosophical tradition established by B. P. Bowne to lay the epistemological foundations for overcoming the impersonalist modes of thought in the philosophical-humanitarian space of North America.On the base of analyzing Bowne's revision of Kant's transcendental idealism aimed at the explication of the immediacy of self-experience the author reveals that such argumentation for its cognitive primacy transforms into affirming the mediation of the inner appeal of the human personality to living God by the outer interpersonal experience of rational cognition.The revealed regression to the rationally mediated relationship of the created person with Creator is connected with the restriction of the research for "personal beginning of all speculation" which resulted in the personal metaphysics of B. P. Bowne by the rationalistic tools of the personal self-reflection.The study proves that it was predetermined by Bowne's confessional belonging to the Methodist Church detached from patristic Trinitology and Christology forming the arsenal of trinitar-ian meta-logic intended to expound the personhood as the ultimate principle of being.

Conclusions
The scope of comprehending the personality formed by the personalist thought of the USA was predicted by its return to the inner experience of the self explicated as the all-sufficient cognitive criterion in the course of revising the ratiocentric mainstream of the historical-philosophical process.Actualizing in the context of the genesis of the personalistic movement on the North American continent as an initiative of B. P. Bowne, the intention of expounding the immediate self-experience by means of philosophical reflection was performed by "the father of American personalism" himself in the course of reinterpreting metaphysical categories and concepts of classical (Kantian) phenomenologism.Persistent in asserting the irreducibility of the personhood opened by the personal experience of self-cognition Bowne's explication of its immediacy was limited by his devotion to Methodism predetermining his detachment from patristic theology revealing the meta-ontology of the personality on the base of explaining the dogma about God existing as "one essence in three persons".Deprived of the resource of the trinitarian meta-logic providing the comprehension of the hypostatic mode of existence the metaphysitianpersonalist started his arguing for the cognitive priority of self-experience with the substitution of realizing the image of unconditional being given to the self by the nature of the human personality by the insight of the personal world.As a result the philosopher's argumentation for the immediate character of the inner experience of the created person transforms into asserting the mediation of his/her appeal to Creator by the outer interpersonal experience of rational cognition.
Nevertheless the idea of the "personal interpretation of experience" formulated by B. P. Bowne to define the authentic form of ultimate explanations broke the ground for the subsequent "personalized" ontological constructions which form the dialogic space of the personalist philosophy of the USA predetermining the accumulation of its potential in the interaction with other philosophical currents.Manifesting itself as the personalistic inspiration of the emerging trends of thought this tendency predicts the further historical-philosophical research of American personalism.