RELIGION AS THE FORM OF COMPREHENSION OF BEING
Svetlana KhmelevskayaThe article is devoted to religion as one of the forms of comprehension of being. To denote the processes of getting various kinds of knowledge in different types of activities in the society the term «comprehension» is used (which is wider than the concept «cognition»). Methodologically «comprehension» is closer to Hegelian interpretation of knowledge acquisition as a cultural and historical process. As a result of comprehension different types of knowledge are formed: the reflective knowledge presenting the world in its own logic and the evaluative knowledge connected with trying to understand this world. The comprehension of being proceeds in stable forms which occupy their own places in general comprehension system (mythology, philosophy, science, religion, art, occultism, trivial and practical knowledge). Depending on the created images of objective reality, methods of its acquisition, methods of obtaining knowledge and their specificity, realistic, imaginative and ambivalent forms of comprehension of objective reality are distinguished. Along with mythology and art, religion can be attributed to imaginative forms of comprehension in which images of the world are created: on the one hand, realistic, and on the other hand, imaginative (in religion, moreover, sacred), built according to the laws of imagination. As any form of comprehension of being, religion has a structure which is represented in the social, epistemological and psychological blocks. The social bloc reveals the process of forming beliefs in the course of religious activity. The epistemological block reflects the specificity of religious knowledge and the methods of obtaining it. The psychological block is dedicated to the peculiarities of religious faith as a gnoseo-psychological mechanism of consciousness, and it also includes other psychological aspects related to the process of obtaining religious knowledge.