«Оправдание» души как «оправдание» человека: философско-религиозный ракурс

Abstract

The article (using the example of the European cultural tradition) actualizes the problem of the heuristic potential of the concept of ‘soul’, which is far from being fully used, due to the dominance of positivist ideas. The category ‘soul’ is the most adequate in its content and depth, for the study of the inner immaterial world of a person in its integrity. The concept of ‘psyche’ that displaces and replaces it is narrower, covering mainly the processes of reflecting the world for optimal adaptation to it. The dominant of this concept, on the one hand, expresses the real impoverishment of a person’s inner life, the loss of moral, metaphysical experiences and reflections by it. On the other hand, the view through the ‘prism of the psyche’ has a limited cognitive potential, not allowing to reveal the fullness of the inner world of a person, his essential depths. The category ‘soul’ is the earliest, most developed, universal, allowing to explore the structure and functioning, formation and development of the inner world of a person. It is the concept of ‘soul’ that appears, starting from ancient and early Christian thought, synonymous with the concept of ‘human life’. The evolution of the content of the ‘sole’ concept in European thought is a reflection of the real processes taking place in the inner being of a person. During the period of anthroposociogenesis, the formation of the human soul takes place, consisting in the ‘gathering’ of its main parts. In the development of spiritual life, one can distinguish the line of ascent – to the spiritual, and the line of descent – to the material, carnal. The line of ascent unfolds from the first steps of history to the bright Middle Ages. The line of descent plays an increasingly active role from the ‘dark Middle Ages’ to the present. In the New and Modern times, the process of reducing the soul into the psyche is actualized. Moral and metaphysical experiences and reflections, which constitute the essence of the soul, lose their leading role. The ‘death of God’ (as the highest moral and metaphysical law) is an expression of the ‘death’ of the soul, leading to the ‘death’ of a person. The “justification” of the soul, its “new finding” will allow a person to realize a “new finding” of himself.