Paradoxes of Identity with ἄθεος and religio in Religious Studies Discussions of Modern Russia

Abstract

From the perspective of philosophical religious study, religion and atheism are viewed as social phenomena and legacy periodically defined and redefined in lo­cal contexts. Historically and in modern spiritual culture, they are a collective set of heterogeneous forms ascending to the Greco-Roman cultural context of the terms “ἄθεος” and “religio”. Explicit and implicit characteristics of these cross-cultural and trans-historic symbolizations of normative images of true forces of being are analyzed as disconnected from various marginalities and de­viations constructed at different stages of global civilization development in lo­cal centers, including Russia. The lexeme “ἄθεος” is viewed in the spectrum of connotations from the tragic abandonment by gods to the heroic enthusiasm of the denial of false images of gods”. The lexeme “religio” is shown in the range of connotations from horror of ominous signs to the jubilant veneration of legiti­mate gods leading to harmony with the supreme forces of nature (Cicero). Insti­tutional and elementary phenomena of religious commitment and atheism are separated and defined in the light of distancing unfamiliar and familiar rather than by traditional division of faith and mind or sacred and profane (N. Luh­mann). Man has always created speculative realms (magic, myth, religion, phi­losophy, and science) where the unknown was symbolically presented as hope of communication with mysterious actors, experienced as joy and jubilation in the case of support, or as disappointment and weeping in the case of absence of such support.