Religion and Philosophy: Experience and Perspectives of Interaction

Abstract

The article combines three authors’ approaches to understand the relationship between religion and philosophy. In the first approach, it is proved that religion and philosophy, separated from the myth, maintain an internally contradictory but productive relationship with it and with each other. As a result of interaction, philosophical ideas become a prerequisite for religious innovations, and religious meanings—the basis of philosophical reflection, which indicates the common functions of religion and philosophy in the field of preservation and transit of ideas. The second approach argues for the commonality and difference between the functions of religion and philosophy in the field of the formation of social forms and spiritual content of man: they can be the basis for both social integration and disintegration. In the era of globalization, when the processes of social disintegration prevail, religion and philosophy fill the worldview void. But in contrast to religious dogmas, philosophical concepts, even excluding, complement each other, actualizing opposite aspects of Truth. In this respect, philosophy is “more” than religion, science, myth, or art. Due to its synthetic nature, it claims to be a new creed. This potential can be used for both constructive and destructive purposes. In the third approach, the conclusion about the alienation of philosophical and religious ideas in the process of their assimilation and implementation is proved. Mass consciousness adapts theological and philosophical constructions, distorting not only their essence, but the form of expression. There is a gap between the original religious and philosophical meanings and the real content of the spiritual life of society. This gap paradoxically ensures the transition of religious meanings to philosophical ones and vice versa. In this regard, philosophy can act as a religion, and religion as a philosophy, which is expressed in political technologies of social creation and destruction.