Religious worldview arises when humanity realized that in this world not everything depends on physical capabilities that with fortitude and thinking you can achieve more than with brute physical strength. The mythological cult of the body gives way to the religious cult of the spirit. But, having emerged as a special reality, the spirit, soul, and consciousness subsequently gave rise to a philosophical worldview, which outwardly often resembles a religious one. Religion and philosophy often use the same concepts. However, these types of worldviews differ both in the ways of reflecting the world in human consciousness (religion presents its content in a sensory-rational form, philosophy in the form of abstract-logical constructs), and in their own foundations. Religious worldview is a generalization, a summary spiritual experience humanity, and through it, other forms of experience. A philosophical worldview is a generalization and summary of the total experience of humanity: industrial, social, spiritual.
Historically, both philosophy and religion arise on the basis of a mythological worldview as a result of its critical understanding, as a response to doubts about the sufficiency and indisputability of the mythologized world, its norms of life and rules of behavior.
Early religious consciousness is still largely mythological. The world for him exists as a certain predetermination. Life is determined by centuries-old traditions, once and for all established rules: the subordination of the individual to the clan, the younger to the elder, the clan member to the authority of the head of the clan; the weak to the strong... The individual is so collective that he does not yet exist as an individual, an independent unit. However, gradually, due to the fact that nature opposed man with its power, strength, and inexorability, people arose and then established an instinctive feeling of the presence of an omnipotent and omnipresent being behind the unknown and uncontrollable forces. A creature superior to man in its significance, natural strength and influence on the world. Fear of natural phenomena was also reinforced by helplessness in the face of spontaneous, uncontrollable forces of social existence, such as wars, the rule of the stronger or more fortunate, the anger and mercy of the tyrant, etc.
Developed religious consciousness (represented in particular by monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam) separates the sphere of God from the sphere of man. Unlike early religious ideas, God and man are here opposed to each other as different sides being.
The division of the world into the sphere of the human and the sphere of the divine has confronted man with the task of comprehending his existence, based on a new – “bifurcated” reality. Within the framework of this approach, a system of religious dogmas and regulations is formed, given as a revelation to the elect. It describes all the norms of a righteous life and a person’s relationship with the higher world.
For centuries, religion has more or less effectively used in its worldview system life-meaning guidelines, expressed in such concepts as "fate", " life path", "happiness", "share", "love", "purpose of life" and others. It is through them that the main direction of religious consciousness is set and the path of life of a person and society is formed - from the point of view of religion, the only true and justified one.
Religion is imbued with an unshakable faith in “revelation”, in its absolute significance. It admits the fantastic, the magical and the miraculous, but distinguishes the fantastic from the real and separates them. At the same time, she experiences discomfort from the discrepancy between the ideal and the real, and therefore obliges people to live according to their ideal standards, demands compliance with certain kinds of rituals and prohibitions, because without them the divine ideal is unattainable.
The attractiveness of such a system of views is largely determined by the fact that religion “works” more with the sensual, emotional, deep, and to a certain extent unconscious, side of the human personality based on unconditional faith. Religious faith gives the believer vital stability, formalizes and strengthens all value-significant spiritual attitudes: respect for tradition, personal valor, confidence in the fight against life's difficulties, courage in the face of death, etc. Faith, as an attribute of religion, has a huge social significance, is formalized and supported in a religious cult and religious ceremony.
The religious worldview, among others, occupies its own “ecological” niche and is unlikely to ever disappear. Ultimately, society is to a certain extent interested in the functioning of the institution of religion, since it helps a person maintain peace and harmony in relationships between people, compensate for personal dissatisfaction, and psychological inability to overcome many of life’s ups and downs.
Content
Introduction………………………………………………………………………...3
- Worldview and its methodological functions in constructing a picture of the world…………………………………………………………………….5
Structure of worldview…………………………………………… …….8
Features of the religious worldview……………………………..11
List of references……………………………………………………………... 20
Introduction
Since ancient times and to this day, philosophers have paid a lot of attention to the study of various forms of worldview, since, having understood their features, one can more easily understand certain actions, the essence of being. A person is born twice. For the first time, he comes into the world as a living being, and then, adapting to it and at the same time “adapting” it to himself, he organizes and harmonizes his personality, creates for himself a “map-scheme” of reality, forms the principles of the universe and the principles of life, comprehends environment, clarifies and constructs the meaning of life. By asserting himself with the help of cognitive abilities, a person develops an intellectual, value-emotional attitude to the world, which in the form of a system of views, ideals, principles of cognition and activity constitutes a worldview.
Worldview is a system of generalized views on the world and a person’s place in it, on people’s attitude to the reality around them and to themselves, as well as the basic life positions of people, their beliefs, ideals, principles of cognition and activity, and value orientations determined by these views. Worldview is not all views and ideas about the world around us, but only their utmost generalization. The content of a worldview is grouped around one or another solution to the basic question of philosophy. The group and the individual actually act as the subject of the worldview. Worldview is the core of social and individual consciousness. Developing a worldview is a significant indicator of the maturity of not only an individual, but also a certain social group, a social class. In its essence, worldview is a socio-political phenomenon that arose with the advent of human society.
The object of this essay is worldview, and the subject is religious worldview.
The purpose of the work is to identify the characteristics of the religious worldview. To achieve this, a number of tasks were set:
- Explore the concept of worldview;
Reveal the structure of the worldview;
Identify types of worldviews;
Determine the features of the religious worldview.
- Worldview and its methodological functions in constructing a picture of the world
With the help of a worldview, a person builds a picture of the world of a certain era or his own. Worldview is a complex view of how to behave in this world both in relation to Space and in relation to Time. For example, the worldview of Western Europeans is considered active, rational and linear (a “male-type” culture), while the worldview of the peoples of the East is considered contemplative, irrational and non-linearized (a “female-type” culture). Worldview is a way of constructing a picture of the world.
The picture of the world is a generalized knowledge about the structure, structure of the world, the laws of its development. The picture of the world is the starting point and the result of the activity of the worldview.
The picture of the world is given to a person (or community) from the outside (i.e. external conditions existence) immediately after birth in a “collapsed” form, and then, in the process of real life activity, based on the acquired life experience, it is deciphered, corrected and modified in accordance with new objective conditions and subjective desires of a person. The picture of the world, thus, is to a certain extent arbitrary, and to a certain extent - determined by objective circumstances.
The more systematic, broader and deeper the worldview, the more accurate the picture of the world, the more successful the life activity of an individual or community of people, because the program of human life activity becomes more accurate and adaptive, i.e. her worldview strategy. This is the main function of worldview. It is called methodological (method - method; logos - teaching; execution function), since it is the worldview of an individual or society that determines which methods will be used to achieve a life goal. The fact is that people, carrying out any activity, live not only in the Present (like animals), but, at the same time, in the Past, and in the Present, and in the Future. Therefore, in addition to instincts and unconditioned reflexes, they require special mental structures that allow people to feel confident both in self-esteem and in their forecasts for the future. In addition to the goal, people are usually guided in their behavior by more or less general guidelines, general rules of action, prohibitions, regulations and restrictions. It is these general guidelines that constitute methodology in a broad sense.
A person asserts himself in the objective world not only with the help of thinking, but also through all his cognitive abilities. Holistic awareness and experience of the reality affecting a person in the form of sensations, perceptions, ideas and emotions form a worldview, worldview and worldview. Worldview is only a conceptual, intellectual aspect of a worldview. The worldview is characterized by an even higher integration of knowledge than in the general picture of the world, and the presence of not only an intellectual, but also an emotional and value-based attitude of a person to the world.
The worldview of a huge number of completely different people has many common features in various respects. Thus, a worldview can be scientific or anti-scientific, religious or atheistic, ordinary or philosophical, but it always strives for integrity and success in relation to very specific circumstances. However, this integrity and this success are achieved in different ways. The artistic, mythological, and religious worldview are formed with the predominant importance of the worldview; the scientific worldview operates mainly at the level of worldview; the philosophical attempts to systematically harmonize both levels; and the everyday worldview is an arbitrary confusion of worldview with worldview.
Being a reflection of the world and a value-based attitude towards it, worldview also plays a certain regulatory and creative role, acting as a methodology for constructing a general picture of the world. Not a single specific science in itself is a worldview, although each of them necessarily contains a worldview principle.
The concept of worldview is correlated with the concept of “ideology,” but they do not coincide in content: a worldview is broader than ideology. Ideology covers only that part of the worldview that is focused on social phenomena. Worldview as a whole refers to all objective reality and to man.
- Worldview structure
A person’s worldview certainly reveals itself in various phenomena of his spiritual life and behavior: views, beliefs, convictions, actions, etc. But in them one should see only individual manifestations of deeper structures or layers of worldview.
The main structure-forming element of a worldview is the questions that arise before a person with the beginning of his conscious life:
- “About existing” (what it means to exist and to be valid or real);
- “About what should be” (what has the highest value, i.e. is good, and what does not have value or is “anti-value”; what should ultimately be strived for and what should be avoided);
- “On the realization of what should be in existence” (how, in what ways one can achieve what should be, in short - how to live in this world, guided by chosen values).
The central problem of worldview is the question of the place and purpose of man in the world. The answers to other ideological questions depend on its solution. Although they, in turn, influence the solution to this problem.
The indicated groups of worldview problems and questions correspond to the cognitive, value and program-behavioral subsystems of the worldview, in which the formation of views, beliefs, and life strategies occurs.
Each person's worldview is deeply individual. It carries within itself features determined by the characteristics of the historical era in which a person lives, his upbringing and education, and professional activities. The state of physical and mental health and much more leave an imprint on it. Not only specific views differ, but also the very ways of understanding worldview problems, the role of logic and imagery in constructing a worldview, the degree and nature of its emotionality.
But people's worldviews are not only different. They have a lot in common. And in terms of content, there are views that are widespread and even dominant in society or its individual layers. For example, religious views of a certain kind. And according to the ways of organizing these views. For example, attaching special importance to the personal authority of a person who formulates views, or, on the contrary, giving greater value logical harmony of the views themselves, etc.
The presence of common features allows us to consider the worldview no longer of an individual person, although it is sometimes of interest, but a type of worldview inherent in a large number of people.
In the very general view and with a certain degree of convention, all types of worldviews can be divided into socio-historical and existential-personal.
Socio-historical types are formed at different stages of human development and differ primarily in the way in which the worldview becomes accessible to people in different historical eras. The most important socio-historical types of worldview are: archaic, or the most ancient (animism, totemism, fetishism, etc.), mythological, religious and philosophical. They differ not just in different formulations of ideological problems, but also in fundamentally different ways of solving them.
Existential-personality types worldviews are formed at various stages of a person’s spiritual development and differ mainly in the way in which the individual assimilates the worldview achievements of mankind and produces them himself. The worldview of an individual can be formed either spontaneously or purposefully. In the latter case, the role of the individual can be either predominantly passive, when he uncritically (dogmatically) assimilates ready-made views, or active, when he conducts a conscious (intentional) worldview search. In the latter case, he needs to take a critical look at his own inner world and engage in reflection, that is, give himself an account of how, by what means, on what foundations his worldview will be built. These individual ways of forming a worldview correspond to spontaneous, dogmatic and intentional-reflective types of worldview.
They also distinguish between ordinary, religious, and philosophical worldviews.
- Features of the religious worldview
Worldview constructs, being included in the cult system, acquire the character of a creed. What gives the worldview a special spiritual and practical character. With the help of ritual, religion cultivates human feelings of love. Kindness, tolerance, duty, etc., connecting their presence with the sacred, supernatural.
The main function of religion is to help a person overcome the historically variable, transitory, relative aspects of his existence and elevate a person to something absolute, eternal. In the spiritual and moral sphere, this is manifested in giving norms, values and ideals an absolute, unchangeable character.
Thus, religion gives meaning and meaning, and therefore stability to human existence, helps him overcome everyday difficulties.
Within any religion there is a system (a system of answering questions). But philosophy formulates its conclusions in a rational form, and in religion there is an emphasis on faith. Religion presupposes ready-made answers to questions.
Religious doctrine does not tolerate criticism. Any religion offers ideals to a person and is accompanied by rites and rituals (specific actions). Each developed religious teaching contains imprints of a pronounced systematic nature. The religious worldview is also characterized by the following features:
1. Symbolism (every significant phenomenon in nature or history is considered as a manifestation of the Divine will), through a symbol a connection is made between the supernatural and natural worlds;
2. It has a value-based relationship to reality (reality is the spatio-temporal extent of the struggle between good and evil);
3. Time is also connected with Sacred history (the time before and after the Nativity of Christ);
4. Revelation is recognized as the word of God and this leads to the absolutization of the word (logos), the logos becomes the image of God.
Mythological consciousness historically precedes religious consciousness. The religious worldview is more systematic than the mythological one, it is more perfect in logical terms. The systematic nature of religious consciousness presupposes its logical ordering, and continuity with mythological consciousness is ensured through the use of an image as the main lexical unit.
The religious worldview “works” on two levels: on the theoretical-ideological level (in the form of theology, philosophy, ethics, social doctrine of the church), i.e. at the level of worldview, and socio-psychological, i.e. level of attitude. At both levels, religiosity is characterized primarily by belief in the supernatural (supernatural), belief in miracles. A miracle is against the law. The law is called immutability in change, the indispensable uniformity of the action of all homogeneous things. A miracle contradicts the very essence of the law: Christ walked on water, just like on dry land, and this is a miracle. Mythological ideas have no idea of a miracle: for them the most unnatural is natural.
The religious worldview already distinguishes between the natural and the unnatural, and already has limitations. The religious picture of the world is much more contrasting than the mythological one, richer in colors.
It is much more critical than the mythological one, and less arrogant. However, everything revealed by the worldview that is incomprehensible, contrary to reason, the religious worldview explains by a universal force capable of disrupting the natural course of things and harmonizing any chaos.
Belief in this external superpower is the basis of religiosity. Religious philosophy, thus, like theology, proceeds from the thesis that there is some ideal superpower in the world, capable of manipulating both nature and the destinies of people at will. At the same time, both religious philosophy and theology substantiate and prove by theoretical means both the necessity of Faith and the presence of an ideal superpower - God.
Religious worldview and religious philosophy are a type of idealism, i.e. such a direction in the development of social consciousness in which the original substance, i.e. The basis of the world is the Spirit, the idea. Varieties of idealism are subjectivism, mysticism, etc. The opposite of a religious worldview is an atheistic worldview.
The first historical type of worldview was mythological, the second historical type of worldview was religion. The religious worldview had many common features with the mythological worldview that preceded it, but it also had its own characteristics. First of all, the religious worldview differs from the mythological one in the way of spiritual assimilation of reality. Mythological images and ideas were multifunctional: in them, in a still undeveloped form, cognitive, artistic and evaluative development of reality was intertwined, which created the preconditions for the emergence on their basis of not only religion, but also various types literature and art. Religious images and representations perform only one function - evaluative and regulatory.
An integral feature of religious myths and ideas is their dogmatism. Having arisen, religion retains a certain stock of ideas for several centuries.
Religious images are polysemantic: they allow for various interpretations, including absolutely opposite ones. Therefore, on the basis of one system of religious dogmas, many different directions always develop, for example in Christianity: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism.
Another feature of religious images and ideas is that they contain hidden irrationality, which can only be perceived by faith, and not by reason. The latter reveals the meaning of the image, but does not refute or destroy it. This feature of the religious image underlies the recognition of the priority of religious faith over reason.
The central place in any religious worldview is always occupied by the image or idea of God. God here is seen as the first principle and fundamental principle of everything that exists. Moreover, this is no longer a genetic beginning, as in mythology, but a first principle - creating, creating, producing.
The next feature of the religious and worldview method of mastering reality is the universalization of the spiritual-volitional connection, the idea of which is gradually replacing the mythological ideas of a universal kinship connection. From the point of view of a religious worldview, everything that exists and happens in the world depends on the will and desire of God. Everything in the world is governed by divine providence or moral law established and controlled by a supreme being.
Religion is characterized by recognition of the primacy of the spiritual over the physical, which is not found in mythology. The attitude to reality determined by a religious worldview differs significantly from the illusory-praxeological method of action associated with a mythological worldview. This is a passive attitude towards reality. The dominant position in religion is occupied by propitiatory actions (veneration of various objects endowed with supernatural properties, prayers, sacrifices and other actions).
Thus, religious worldview - this is a way of mastering reality through its doubling into natural, earthly, this-worldly and supernatural, heavenly, otherworldly. The religious worldview has gone through a long path of development, from primitive to modern (national and world) forms.
The emergence of a religious worldview was a step forward in the development of human self-awareness. In religion, unity was realized between different clans and tribes, on the basis of which new communities were created - nationalities and nations. World religions, such as Christianity, even rose to the level of awareness of community and the proclamation of equality before God of all people. At the same time, each of them emphasized the special position of its followers.
The historical significance of religion was that in both slave-holding and feudal societies it contributed to the formation and strengthening of new social relations and the formation of strong centralized states. Meanwhile, religious wars have occurred in history.
The cultural significance of religion cannot be unequivocally assessed. On the one hand, it undoubtedly contributed to the spread of education and culture. A variety of knowledge was accumulated and preserved in temples. Outstanding achievements in architecture, painting, music and choral art are associated with religion. At the temples the first educational establishments, for example, fraternal schools in Ukraine and Belarus. Reading sacred books was and is of great cognitive and educational importance. At the same time, we know about the mass destruction by Christians of monuments of pagan culture, about the Inquisition, which destroyed hundreds of thousands of people.
In our time, religion continues to be one of the most widespread worldviews, which occupies a significant place in the life of any society. Both mythology and religion arose from man’s practical relationship to the world and were aimed at overcoming the alienation and hostility of the outside world. Although they outlined the main ideological problems, they could not ensure that a person understands the full complexity of his social existence.
Religious and secular worldviews explain the source of morality in accordance with their own value systems. A feature of religious morality is its orientation towards two groups of values: earthly (subordinate) and heavenly (dominant). Thus, the biblical decalogue (ten words, commandments) is divided into four defining principles of man’s relationship with God and subsequent derivatives that regulate relations between people.
The norms of religious morality sanctify social and ethnic moral codes in a complex, often contradictory combination. Religious morality also enshrines the simplest norms of morality, reflection on “eternal” moral problems. Religious forms reflect the centuries-old experience of the moral culture of mankind. Strengths religious morality and ethics are such features of the religious worldview as the external simplicity of answers to complex moral problems, clear guidelines and accessible examples of moral behavior, as well as the formulation and provision of the problem of moral responsibility (God sees everything). On the other hand, as cultural history testifies, these same aspects of religious morality are able to breathe life into such orientations as literalism, passivity, intolerance, and delegation of personal moral responsibility to religious leaders and organizations. Religious morality and ethics have been and remain, perhaps, the strongest side of the religious worldview. The 17th century French thinker P. Bayle was the first to suggest the possibility of a non-religious society in which morality is ensured due to the absence of superstition. The real atheism of the twentieth century, naturally, causes theologians to be active in the sphere of religious and moral life. The main motive is to reduce the global problems of humanity to the consequence of the spiritual and moral crisis of a secular (non-religious) society. But was the life of society highly moral and crisis-free before the twentieth century? There are reasoned answers from skeptics to this question, but positive thinking is more promising. Religious and secular worldviews can interact in asserting the priority of humanistically oriented spirituality and thus overcoming the ideology of both unjustified asceticism and material consumerism.
Truth, Goodness, Beauty have been the pinnacles of the values of philosophical systems since their inception. The true is moral and beautiful, the false is immoral and ugly, many thinkers say. What is beauty? Religious philosophers and theologians give priority to the religious, and in art they see the beginning of God and the path to God. What art and religion have in common is their value nature, the combination of rational and emotional-fantastic elements. The most important aspect of the aesthetic attitude to the world is the affirmation of the creative principle of man over the material. In the aesthetic world created by man, he asserts his essential powers. Religious art sees in human achievements the guiding influence of divine providence. It is customary to distinguish between religious art in a narrow and broad sense. In the first version, this is art that is part of a cult; in the second, it is non-cult art that has a religious orientation. Religious art is officially recognized by the church as creativity in accordance with the canons of the confession. Non-cult religious art does not have such a high status and is not focused on the requirements of the cult. It provides more opportunities for creative expression of the artist’s religious and spiritual world. Religious art is always associated with a specific religious direction (confession) and has national and regional characteristics. The artistic principle is relatively independent in relation to the cult. Many monuments of artistic culture created on themes and plots different religions, entered the priceless treasury of culture. They are in architecture, fine arts, music, singing, ornamentation, etc. In each religion, a unique ensemble of works of these types of art provides the aesthetic and psychological side of religious activity.
Religious art is multifunctional. The canon, the plan and its implementation depend on the context of the era. Accordingly, a work of religious art carries information about the sociocultural situation of the time in which it was created. In turn, people who perceive a work of religious art emphasize the content or form in accordance with the artistic taste of their time and personal ideal. When perceiving a work of art, an artistic image becomes the property of the inner world of the individual.
In Russian art of recent decades, artistic and aesthetic approaches to religious images and subjects have been developing, which were prohibited or limited in the first decades of Soviet society according to the norms of militant atheism. Secular aesthetics and art, steadily developing in the ethnic cultures of the past millennium, remain the prevailing trend in the ideological orientations of post-Soviet society.
Conclusion
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The religious worldview was initially formed on the basis of the mythological, including in his picture of the world the image of a cultural hero as a mediator between gods and people, endowed with both divine and human nature, natural and supernatural abilities.
However, religion, unlike mythology, draws a precise line between the natural and the supernatural, endowing the first with only a material essence, the second with only a spiritual one. Therefore, during the period when mythological and religious ideas were combined in a religious-mythological worldview, the compromise of their coexistence was paganism - the deification of natural elements and various sides human activity (gods of crafts, gods of agriculture) and human relationships (gods of love, gods of war). From the mythological beliefs in paganism, two sides of the existence of every thing, every creature, every natural phenomenon remained - obvious and hidden for people; numerous spirits remained that enliven the world in which a person lives (spirits are the patrons of the family, spirits are the guardians of the forest). But paganism included the idea of the autonomy of the gods from their functions, of the separation of the gods from the forces they control (for example, the thunder god is not part or the secret side of thunder and lightning, the shaking of the heavens is the wrath of god, and not his incarnation).
As religious beliefs developed, the religious worldview became freed from many features of the mythological worldview.
Such features of the mythological picture of the world as:
– lack of a clear sequence of events in myths, their timeless, ahistorical nature;
– zoomorphism, or bestiality of mythological gods, their spontaneous actions that defy human logic;
– the secondary role of man in myths, the uncertainty of his position in reality.
Holistic religious worldviews were formed when monotheistic creeds emerged, when systems of dogmas or indisputable truths of monotheism appeared, by accepting which a person joins God, lives according to his commandments and measures his thoughts and actions in the value guidelines of holiness - sinfulness.
Religion is a belief in the supernatural, a recognition of higher extraterrestrial and supra-social forces that create and maintain this world and the beyond. Belief in the supernatural is accompanied by an emotional experience, a sense of human involvement in a deity hidden from the uninitiated, a deity that can be revealed in miracles and visions, in images, symbols, signs and revelations through which the deity makes itself known to the initiate. Belief in the supernatural is formalized into a special cult and a special ritual, which prescribe special actions with the help of which a person comes to faith and is established in it.
In the religious worldview, being and consciousness are identical; these concepts define the consubstantial, eternal and infinite God, in relation to whom nature and man, derived from him, are secondary, and therefore temporary, finite.
Society seems to be a spontaneous gathering of people, since it is not endowed with its own special soul (in scientific worldview called social consciousness), what a person is endowed with. Man is weak, the things he produces are perishable, deeds are fleeting, worldly thoughts are vain. The community of people is the vanity of the earthly stay of a person who has departed from the commandments given from above.
In the vertical picture of the world, God is a man public relations are perceived as purely personal, individual actions of people, projected onto the great plan of the Creator. The man in this picture is not the crown of the universe, but a grain of sand in the whirlwind of heavenly predestination.
In religious consciousness, as in mythology, the spiritual and practical development of the world is carried out through its division into the sacred (sacred) and the everyday, “earthly” (profane). However, the elaboration of the ideological content of a religious belief system rises to a qualitatively different level. The symbolism of myth is replaced by a complex, sometimes sophisticated system of images and meanings, in which theoretical and conceptual constructs begin to play a significant role. The most important principle in the construction of world religions is monotheism, the recognition of one God. The second qualitatively new feature is the deep spiritual and ethical content of the religious worldview. Religion, for example Christianity, gives a fundamentally new interpretation of the nature of man as a being, on the one hand, “sinful”, mired in evil, on the other hand, created in the image and likeness of the Creator.
The formation of religious consciousness falls during the period of decomposition of the tribal system. In the era of early Christianity, the rational proportionality and harmony of the cosmos of the ancient Greeks was replaced by a picture of the world full of horrors and apocalyptic visions, by the perception of social reality that developed among the enslaved peoples of the Roman Empire, among fugitive slaves, among the dispossessed, powerless, hiding in the caves and deserts of the Front and Asia Minor Semitic tribes. In conditions of general alienation, many people were practically deprived of everything - shelter, property, family, and a runaway slave could not even consider his own body to belong to him. It was during this period, a turning point and tragic moment in history, that one of the greatest ideological insights entered into culture: all people, regardless of social status and ethnicity, are equal before the Almighty, man is the bearer of the greatest, hitherto unclaimed wealth - the immortal soul, the source of moral strength, spiritual fortitude, fraternal solidarity, selfless love and mercy. A new cosmos, unknown to people of the previous era, opened up - the cosmos of the human soul, the inner support of a destitute and humiliated human being.
Mythological consciousness historically precedes religious consciousness. The religious worldview is more systematic than the mythological one, it is more perfect in logical terms. The systematic nature of religious consciousness presupposes its logical ordering, and continuity with mythological consciousness is ensured through the use of an image as the main lexical unit.
The religious worldview “works” on two levels: on the theoretical-ideological level (in the form of theology, philosophy, ethics, social doctrine of the church), i.e. at the level of worldview, and socio-psychological, i.e. level of attitude. At both levels, religiosity is characterized primarily by belief in the supernatural (supernatural), belief in miracles. A miracle is against the law. The law is called immutability in change, the indispensable uniformity of the action of all homogeneous things. A miracle contradicts the very essence of the law: Christ walked on water, just like on dry land, and this is a miracle. Mythological ideas have no idea of a miracle: for them the most unnatural is natural.
The religious worldview already distinguishes between the natural and the unnatural, and already has limitations. The religious picture of the world is much more contrasting than the mythological one, richer in colors.
It is much more critical than the mythological one, and less arrogant. However, everything revealed by the worldview that is incomprehensible, contrary to reason, the religious worldview explains by a universal force capable of disrupting the natural course of things and harmonizing any chaos.
Belief in this external superpower is the basis of religiosity. Religious philosophy, thus, like theology, proceeds from the thesis that there is some ideal superpower in the world, capable of manipulating both nature and the destinies of people at will. At the same time, both religious philosophy and theology substantiate and prove by theoretical means both the necessity of Faith and the presence of an ideal superpower - God.
Religious worldview and religious philosophy are a type of idealism, i.e. such direction in development public consciousness, in which the original substance, i.e. The basis of the world is the Spirit, the idea. Varieties of idealism are subjectivism, mysticism, etc. The opposite of a religious worldview is an atheistic worldview.
Main features of the philosophical worldview
Philosophy can be both religious and atheistic, depending on what initial ideological thesis it is guided by when building its system. But the main feature of the philosophical worldview is its criticality in relation to even its own initial theses.
The philosophical worldview appears in a conceptual, categorical form, to one degree or another relying on the achievements of the sciences of nature and society and possessing a certain measure of logical evidence.
The main features of the philosophical worldview:
- conceptual validity;
- systematic;
- versatility;
- criticality.
Despite its maximum criticality and scientific nature, philosophy is extremely close to the everyday, religious and even mythological worldview, for, like them, it chooses the direction of its activity very arbitrarily.
Conclusion
Worldview is a general understanding of the world, man, society, which determines the socio-political, philosophical, religious, moral, aesthetic, scientific and theoretical orientation of a person.
Worldview is not only the content, but also a way of understanding reality, as well as the principles of life that determine the nature of activity. The nature of ideas about the world contributes to the setting of certain goals, from the generalization of which a general life plan is formed, ideals are formed that give the worldview effective force. The content of consciousness turns into a worldview when it acquires the character of convictions, a person’s complete and unshakable confidence in the correctness of his ideas.
All types of worldview reveal some unity, covering a certain range of issues, for example, how spirit relates to matter, what a person is and what is his place in the universal interconnection of world phenomena, how a person knows reality, what good and evil are, according to what laws human society develops . The epistemological structure of a worldview is formed as a result of the generalization of natural science, socio-historical, technical and philosophical knowledge.
Worldview has enormous practical life meaning. It influences norms of behavior, a person’s attitude towards work, towards other people, the nature of life’s aspirations, his way of life, tastes and interests. This is a kind of spiritual prism through which everything around us is perceived and experienced.
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A religious worldview is based on faith, and its foundations are usually written down in sacred texts. Adherents of a particular religion believe that sacred texts are dictated or inspired by God or gods, or written by saints and dedicated teachers.
There are two types of religions – polytheism and monotheism.
Polytheism– Religions based on belief in several gods are the oldest form of religions. In polytheism, the world appears as a hierarchy of deities who have to varying degrees power and entering into conflict with each other difficult relationships, at the head of the divine pantheon is the supreme god. An example of polytheism is greek paganism, belief olympian gods. The world of the gods is not beyond limits: the gods descend to earth, communicate with people, and some people, as a rule, heroes, can penetrate the world of the gods and even over time take a place in the divine pantheon. But polytheism is not only the distant past of humanity, but also modern world he is presented Hinduism, African cults and etc.
Polytheism is opposed monotheism- religions based on the belief in one God, who has absolute power and is the Creator of everything that exists. Examples of monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Monotheism is a higher stage of development of religion than polytheism, however, there is a debate about the relationship between polytheism and monotheism in religious studies and it is not over yet.
Depending on the type of religion (monotheism, polytheism), as well as the options within one type (monotheistic - Christianity, Islam, Judaism; polytheistic - Buddhism, paganism), different pictures of the world are given, but this diversity is only in the details. The essence of the religious worldview is unchanged, its center is God or many gods. God is unknowable, his qualities and abilities exceed possibilities human perception and understanding. Ordinary religious consciousness, as a rule, refines the image of God, giving it personality traits. In monotheistic religions, the power of God is unlimited; he creates and controls the world in accordance with his plan, which exceeds the capabilities of human understanding. However, religious view on the world and does not imply rational understanding and explanation; the religious picture of the world, unlike the scientific or philosophical one, is a matter of faith, not reason.
The main feature of the religious worldview is the doubling of reality. In religious consciousness, reality exists on two planes - ordinary, worldly, profane, and sacred, sacred, i.e. supernatural. French sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that the doubling of reality is main feature any religion. The sacred is the totality of the sacred, i.e. forbidden things that express socially significant meanings and reflect the social nature of man; the sacred is an object of worship and a source of moral prohibitions. The sacred is primary, it determines daily life of people. On the one hand, a person experiences fear and even horror in relation to the sacred, and on the other hand, the sacred is perceived as something related and close and causes admiration. Modern religion tries to assimilate the latest scientific data on the structure of the Universe, the essence of life, the possibilities of the human psyche, but in religion, regardless of the specific confession, a person cannot cross the line separating the sacred and the profane. The only way to unite a believer with the divine world is a cult, i.e. ceremonies, rituals, prayers, in some cases meditation, and the place where the sacred and the mundane intersect is the temple.
Space and time in religion are also dual; there is space and time of the ordinary world and the sacred world. Moreover, in the sacred world, time becomes eternity, and space is divided into levels - heaven (heaven) and the underground kingdom (hell) with a whole host of creatures inhabiting them.
In the idea of sacred time, different religions agree, the time of the deity is eternity, but there are differences in the understanding of time in the everyday world. Time in Christianity is stretched in a line, from the Creation of the world through the fall of the first people to the second coming of God and the Last Judgment. The beginning and end of earthly time merge with the divine, and everything that happens within the historical line is predetermined by the divine plan and develops in accordance with it. In Greek polytheism or Buddhism, time is understood differently, it is closed and cyclical. The universe emerges from chaos, develops, and then dies to be born again. The cause of death, as a rule, is the same: human sins, the sum of which exceeds a certain specified level that keeps the world from destruction.
The religious picture of the world offers a person the only answer about the meaning of life – this is the salvation of the immortal soul and overcoming one’s own sinful nature. There are also nuances. In Buddhism, for example, where there is no idea of guilt and sin, the meaning of existence is recognized as liberation from samsara - the endless wheel of rebirth and the dissolution of the individual “I” in the higher consciousness. But this detail does not change the essence of the matter; a person’s religious aspiration is an aspiration to the otherworldly, no matter in what form this otherworldly appears. The guide on the path is faith and correct behavior, with the help of which one achieves cleansing from sins in Islam or Christianity, or liberation from the wheel of rebirth in Buddhism.
The vast spiritual experience of humanity is concentrated in religion, so it would be an unforgivable mistake to ignore it. The uncertainty of the future, the infinity of the Universe and their own defenselessness in the face of old age and death force many people to turn to religion and there find answers to questions about the meaning of life. Religion makes it possible to feel under the tutelage of a wise and powerful force, faith in God pacifies a person’s fears and anxieties, this was the case in ancient times, and this is the case now. Understanding the cultural foundations of different religions is important for the harmonious development of the individual, because many holidays and works of art, music and literature are imbued with religious symbols, knowledge of these symbols enriches aesthetic experience and gives deep emotions even to a non-religious person. In modern civilization, religion no longer plays the dominant role that it played in the lives of our ancestors. In developed societies, the question of whether to believe or not is a matter of personal choice, but even now there are states and countries where religion takes the place of state ideology.
