FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE: ESSENTIALITY AND NEW CONTEXTUAL MEANINGS

Abstract

The article considers different approaches to the problem of freedom of conscience. As a result of the formed approaches, it can be established that the essence of research attitudes regarding freedom of conscience was mainly expressed in the model of the relationship "religious organization-person-state". Its leading idea can be considered a combination of two discursive directions of understanding freedom of conscience, which are directly related to each other – legal and axiological. Through the prism of various approaches correlated with modern scientific discourses, new contextual realities are proposed, within which freedom of conscience changes semantic nuances, being realized in the space of religious security, in its which is a free practice of faith by every person within the limits of the freedom of functioning of religious organizations is possible. It is emphasized that the essential features of freedom of conscience are influenced, firstly, by personal factors (worldview, religious traditions, etc.); secondly, confessional and inter-confessional communicative practices (both within the same denomination and at the inter-confessional level); thirdly, institutional "slices" (interactions in the processes of institutionalization), fourthly, state powers (observance of laws, consideration of international experience, prevention of abuse of religion, etc.). Their conceptualization is based on the existential-legal dominant, which largely determines their scientific discourse's content and main structural and semantic aspects. The affirmation and actualization of this discourse took place based on the synthesis of the domestic religious and legal tradition and pan-European humanistic and legal visions. Such a synthesis makes it possible to understand freedom of conscience not only as a worldview value, but also as a strategy for implementing religious security, thanks to which resistance to external and internal threats is possible.