MORALAND VALUE BASES OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS AS A FACTOR OF SPIRITUAL SELF-DETERMINATION OF A PERSONALITY: PHILOSOPHICAL AND CULTURALANALYSIS

Abstract

The question of the knowledge of good and evil arises before every person throughout their life. Throughout its existence, humanity has tried to answer these 'eternal' problems. However, by asking these questions, we are already immersing ourselves in the realm of ethics, the realm of reflections on human morality. Since it is impossible to simply brush aside these and similar bitter and painful questions, life itself constantly leads us back to them. This prompts us to a series of other reflections: can there really be any final, universally significant answers to them, or is everyone simply following their own path and choosing what is closer to them? Thus, the sharper the problems that arise before us, the more uncertain the prospects for the future, the more inevitable the modern person's desire to find solid ground beneath their feet becomes–something worth living for, something that could serve as a kind of guide for their troubled soul, a measure of their actions. Consciously or unconsciously, a person repeatedly turns to important questions of morality, questions of choosing moral values, because we cannot reject them altogether. An important and significant aspect today is the cultural-ethical position of everyone, connected with respect for reality, the awareness of the inviolability of moral values, the irreplaceability and seriousness of each person’s life calling, and the position of self-expression of a free person in the world, which relies on the ethical potential of culture and religion. Always, under any historical conditions, a person feels the need for higher, unchanging value orientations that would strengthen their spiritual strength, enrich their life with meaning, and define the active direction of their life. The aim of the article is to highlight the role of the individual in religious life, analyse the specifics of religious ethics as a sociocultural phenomenon, explore forms of self-determination of the individual and the community, and reveal the influence of religious culture and moral-value orientations on the process of the development, formation, and self- determination of the individual. Scientific novelty. Culture and religious ethics are studied as a philosophical and cultural problem. It is noted and justified that the starting postulate of both religious and moral consciousness is the individual human person. It is emphasized that both morality and religion belong to the world of values, in which not only reason but also feelings and faith, inclinations and attachments, and not dry bureaucratic concepts, but images, play a role. The nature of the interaction between religion and morality is considered, determined by their specifics and differences. In conclusion, it is noted that the place of morality, moral worldview, and attitude towards the world in the system of human culture remains unchanged. It is emphasized that the sphere of ethics encompasses the broadest circle of spiritual searches of a person, united by a common tone of freely limiting one's subjective potentials for the sake of higher life- meaning values. It is defined that ethics relies on the spiritual potential developed by philosophy, on its interpretation of the integral experience of humanity. It is stressed that a person’s moral attitude towards the world, towards reality in any of its forms, is oriented towards the ideal of Good.