METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS IN POST-SOVIET PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Abstract

The article examines the current problems of methodological approaches to the study of religious consciousness in the works of Ukrainian religious scholars and religious philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, whose works form the basis of Ukrainian academic religious studies and are relevant for modern researchers of the philosophy of religion. The relevance of the study is due to the need to search for adequate methods for studying the transformations of religious consciousness in the conditions of war in Ukraine. The main problems are the presence of numerous methodological approaches to defining the phenomenon of religious consciousness, which do not lead to a holistic description of the specified phenomenon. The aim is to determine the place and role of methodological approaches to the study of religious consciousness by Soviet and post-Soviet researchers in modern academic religious studies and religious philosophy. The study is aimed at determining the relevance of classical methods for the study of religious consciousness. The results of the study showed that in modern Ukrainian philosophical thought and religious studies, epistemological, social, structural methods for the study of religious consciousness, proposed by O. Lobovyk, O. Filipovych, V. Tancher with their creative rethinking. Criticism of these approaches is based on the lack of a monistic paradigm for considering the phenomenon of religious consciousness. The article indicates the difference in approaches to assessing methodological approaches to the study of religious consciousness in the Soviet and post-Soviet times in academic religious studies and religious philosophy. While these approaches in academic religious studies are determined to be relevant for clarifying the transformation of religious consciousness in the conditions of modern social challenges, especially in conditions of war, in religious philosophy it is more aimed at searching for new research methods. The conclusions establish that the methodological approaches to the study of religious consciousness proposed by Ukrainian researchers of the Soviet and post-Soviet times are not complete, but are basic for determining the phenomenon of religious consciousness and studying its transformations.