Nataliia Shelkovaia, Ph.D.

Sommer Semester 2022

Nataliia Shelkovaia holds a PhD in Philosophy and is a philosopher, religious scholar and culturologist. She works as an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, Cultural Studies and Information Activities at the Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University. Her PhD Dissertation “Spirituality as an Intention of Personal Being” was the first non-Marxist thesis on spirituality in the USSR. Her research activity mainly involves philosophical and religious anthropology, Russian religious philosophy, social philosophy and psychology, comparative religious studies, the philosophy and psychology of religion, religious ethics. Shelkovaia takes part in international scientific projects such as the book series "Antology of Contemporary Philosophical Thought", "Ex oriente lux" (Latin "Light from the East") and “Integrated science”.

Currently Nataliia Shelkovaia is working on creating the concept of the "iceberg phenomenon". The phenomena that we perceive are just the tip of the iceberg, most of which is under water. What we see above the water is only a small part of the iceberg, a consequence. The causes of this consequence are under water. People judge, perceive this or that phenomenon only by the visible (manifest) part of the iceberg, that is, they see only the consequence, without understanding, not knowing and, perhaps, not even being able to understand and find out the causes of the phenomenon, look "under the water", see that part of the iceberg that is under water, just as a person cannot look into his subconscious, which, in fact, controls the consciousness and all human life. It has always been so. In the modern world, the perception of the iceberg phenomenon has become more difficult. The distortion of the perception of the phenomena of reality, especially political ones, has intensified due to the huge role of the media and high technologies that program the human perception of phenomena (the tip of the iceberg) and their causes (the underwater part of the iceberg) through the prism of mythologems created in the interests of the ruling circles and oligarchs.