Labyrinths of Intellectual Freedom: Science, Religion and Society in the Modern World Press

Abstract

The paper deals with two partly complementary as well as partly contradictory fields of human symbolic experience, id est Science (including Human Sciences) and Religion. Their present day complicated interrelations determine many as­pects of the current social, cultural and political history. This kind of interplay of the both modes of human imagination partly determines some substantial fea­tures of the present day mass migration processes as well as the processes of mi­grants’ adaptation in its individual, small groups’ and collective dimensions. Critical thinking of Science as well as experience of religious piety seem to be different aspects of the same, though complicated problem of human status (in Max Scheler’s terms – “die Stellung des Menschen”) in the Universe, includ­ing the universe of society. This constant and always changing interplay seems to be one of basic preconditions of our intellectual freedom. As for the compre­hensive frame of this paper, it is built on the idea of irreducibility of basic fields of human symbolic experience including science and religion (in all its dizzy va­rieties). This idea is described by the author as the idea of sometimes tacit, but always important correlative interconnection. According to author’s conviction, this idea has not only pure scholarly, but also important socio-cultural as well as political meaning.