Problems of Comprehension of Religion

Abstract

The article examines the process of understanding religion. The tradition ini­tiated by Wilhelm Windelband, Wilhelm Dilthey, Heinrich John Rickert raises the question of the specifics of social cognition, and the answer to this question includes the methodological principle of the division of sciences into natural sci­ences, which explain natural phenomena by revealing causal relationships, and cultural sciences, which comprehend cultural phenomena. In contemporary philosophical literature, the process of comprehension has not received an ade­quate interpretation. The article substantiates the position on the difference be­tween the procedure of comprehension and the procedure of definition and on the irreducibility of explanation, as well as comprehension, only to causality. The procedure of comprehension of religion is revealed in the context of a num­ber of measurements at the level of language, consciousness, properties, founda­tions, practices: the coherence of the proposed measurements is revealed. Based on the consideration of the comprehension of religion in the context of these measurements, the author’s characteristic of religion is revealed: religion is a spi­ritual and practical phenomenon that protects an individual, a group of peo­ple, humanity from varying degrees of risks in certain areas of their being and serves to achieve humanistic value goals (certain religious organizations in cer­tain conditions can implement humanistic non-valid actions).