The Essence of Religion in the Concepts of N.Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler and A. Toynbee: Methodological Foundations

The article deals with topical issues related to religious and cultural processes in the modern world. There is a comparative study of the concepts of local civilizations by N.Y. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, A.J. Toynbee. Their views on the essence of religion, its place, role and functions in different civilizational communities are examined. The author singles out the general and special in the views of these thinkers on religion; gives an assessment of the relevance of their theoretical and methodological ideas in modern times. The work reveals the origins, ideological and theoretical foundations and specificity of the civilizational approach to cultural and historical processes in the context of the classical and non-classical paradigms of scientific and humanitarian cognition. There is given a systematic description of early versions of the concepts of local civilizations, from the point of view of their theoretical, methodological and general cultural grounds. The work combines the diachronic approach (analysis of specific ideas and concepts in the context of their chronological sequence and theoretical-methodological continuity) with the synchronic approach (correlation and comparison of concept components as equivalent in logical and theoretical planes).

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