THE SPECIFIC CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS CULTURE FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

Restoring the Russian religious matrix of thinking after the seventy-year domination of party-state atheism requires thoughtful and unbiased analysis of the specifics of religious culture. The paper reveals the patterns of transition from mythology to the religious way of thinking, determines the place of religion in the historical series of three groups and three social forms of consciousness. The paradox of a religious phenomenon is that, in the form of its existence, it is a phenomenon of social consciousness, and in terms of cultural and historical content it closes the sequence of group forms of consciousness. The enduring value of religious culture is that it is the first syncretic foundation of future mature forms of human spirituality.