Religious foundations of duty

Abstract

It is noted that, simultaneously with the emergence and development of human society, the presence of certain general rules in regulating the behavior of members of society arises. Social life at all stages of its development required the presence of such rules with which we humans could coordinate our behavior and actions and count on a certain predictable result from such behavior or actions. At various stages of the development of society, these or other social regulators become a tool for ensuring such a need. Historically, social norms formed under the influence of requirements and patterns of development of primitive society become the first social regulator. To a greater extent, such societies normalized their focus on the duties of the individual by installing a large number of prohibitions that required members of the society to refrain from undesirable behavior.
 It is indicated that with the complication and branching of social relations in society, general social norms support the impetus for further development and are differentiated in the following form of social regulators, in particular, morality, religion, and law. In our opinion, this order of progression of the development of social regulators is correct and natural. That is, initially the individual in the first society is aware of his responsibility to this or that social association, which is engaged in the creation of moral obligations. Gradually, certain beliefs appear in the primitive society, which contribute to the emergence of religious duties, which do not exclude moral positions, but complement them and values in interaction with them. And only with the appearance of the first state entities, we can talk about introducing obligations into the legal field with their further legal consolidation. It is important to note that in the pre-state period of human development, which occupies a sufficiently long period of time, duties developed outside the law and arose in accordance with human nature, customary norms, traditions, religious dogmas or moral ideas, based on the simplest rules of interpersonal interaction. All these factors - religion, morality, customs and traditions, to a greater or lesser extent changed their role in shaping the future idea of duties, that is why we consider it necessary to investigate the foundations of the institution of duty, in particular through the prism of religious influence.