Methodological foundations for the study of borderline forms of religiosity in a post-traditional society.

Abstract

The subject of this work is methodological approaches to the study of religiosity in posttraditional conditions. Posttraditionality is a "fluid modernity", an "elusive world" is an era of mobile and indefinite cultural forms. In the conditions of posttraditionality, social reality is filled with a multitude of phenomena of indeterminate religiosity – quasi-religions, pseudo-religions, crypto-religions, etc., which cannot even be uniquely identified as religious within the framework of classical approaches, but to neglect their religious elements would mean incompleteness of their study. The purpose of this study is to propose a methodological approach to the study of religion and religiosity in a post–traditional society, which allows explicating its borderline, hidden and implicit forms. This goal requires and implies the formation of an appropriate understanding of religion and religiosity, this approach is foundational. The study proposes a methodological approach based on the synthesis of phenomenological, structural-analytical, hermeneutic approaches. Its basis is the distinction between religiosity as a function of internal experience and religion as institutionalized practices and ideas. Religiosity is a constant function of a person's connection with the subjective ultimate foundations of his existence, which serves as the foundation of a person's sense-setting and goal-setting, conditioning his self in those components that are connected with reality inaccessible to experience and reason. Religiosity expressed externally of a person collides with the totality of objective and objectified structures of reality, and the intentions of other people. The interaction of specific living conditions of people and their intentions generated by religiosity lead to the construction of practices that, through their habitualization, signification and institutionalization, form religion as a social institution. The intended result of the proposed approach can be described as a project of "cartography" of infinitely diverse phenomena of the religious life of modernity in its hidden, shadow forms – where the religious is implicit, borderline – but at the same time functional from the point of view of ultimate goal-setting.