The “New Age”culture in the context of scientific rationality and Christian theological religiosity

Lebedev Vladimir Yur’evich, PhD, professor, the Tver’ State Univerity (Tver’, Russia)
Fedoroff Alexey Vasil’evish, assistant, laboratory multidisciplinary research in biosociology and biophilosophy, Russians Phylosophical society (St. Petersburg, Russia)
Semion.religare@yandex.ru, doctorfedorov100@rambler.ru

Lebedev V. Y., Fedorov A. V. The “New Age”culture in the context of scientific rationality and Christian theological religiosity, Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2014, vol. 3, pp. 34–41.

doi: 10.24411/2308-0698-2014-00003

Language: Russian

The emergence of a large number of mythological elements in the cultural system indicates tension within the system; this phenomenon resists traditional science and theistic religion, based on a rational approach (as opposed to mythological irrationality). “New-mythological Renaissance” of the second half of the 20th century was formed due not only to peculiarities of the cultural mentality of this era, but to active penetration of Eastern mythology and esoteric into European culture. The New Age movement is an abundance of different currents of religious-esoteric sense which still has a big impact on European culture, both secular and religious. The article deals with the causes and consequences of this phenomenon and marks out the peculiarities of the interaction of the New Age movement with scientific rationality and Christian theological religiosity. The extensive factual material shows the penetration of elements of the New Age movement in almost all spheres of European culture. Peculiarities of the interaction of religious and esoteric elements with traditional Christian religiosity are also studied. The popularity of the New Age movement is caused by the characteristics of the basic myths that exist in the mass consciousness. Besides, the article examines the major philosophical paradigms generated by the New Age movement as well as nature of its interaction with religious and scientific rationality. The research is performed on the basis of the analysis of literature data and the author’s field research made by interdisciplinary Laboratory of biosociological and biophilosophy research (Russian philosophical society).
Creative Commons License

Key words: new-mythological, “new age” culture, new religious movements

URL: http://rcs-almanac.ru/lebedev-fedoroff-2014-en/

download PDF
HTML