Transformation of society’s spiritual and moral quest (from pre-modern to post-modern) and its impact on state and law institutions
Authors: Romanovskaya Lubava 
Published: July 2021

The article analyzes the dynamics of the development of spiritual and moral searches of society in historical retrospect, including identifying current trends and evaluating the transformation of religiosity in the current period under the influence of postmodern ideas. Correlations between changes in fundamental paradigms and changes in the ideological foundations of the functioning of state and legal institutions are revealed. It is determined that each of the four types of society — archaic, traditional, industrial and post-industrial (informational) — has its own specific forms of religiosity that determine the worldview and directly affect the social (state) system. Thus, the early forms of religious beliefs of an archaic society did not create prerequisites for the emergence of a social hierarchy, and, consequently, statehood (which is confirmed by the social practice of preserved archaic societies of our time). The archaic society is gradually replaced by the traditional one, hierarchy, social inequality, Patriarchy appear, political Genesis is carried out, and power is legitimized through religious institutions. It is in traditional societies that polytheism is replaced by monotheism, which promotes (and is used for this purpose as a state ideology) the strengthening of statehood. The state-legal institutions of traditional societies have no alternative but to be sacred. The main form of government of the state is monarchy (theocratic or clerical). The transition to modernity takes place under the slogan of desacralization and rationalization, in the ideological field this is manifested in the formation of “quasi-religions” or secular “religions”: Nazism, communism, liberalism (these ideologies replace God in the public consciousness, Absolute (Ultimate) reality — the ultimate reality, while preserving certain features of the religious: ritual, dogmas, symbolism, meaning-making, mythological, etc.). These ideologies determine the global transformation of the geopolitical picture of the world in the XIX—XX centuries. There is the overthrow of the monarchy (or the transition to parliamentary forms of monarchies), the collapse of empires, the establishment of the Republican form of government as the dominant one, with the choice of the appropriate ideology as the basis for state-legal construction. Spiritual search in modern societies was pushed out of public discourse into the area of personal choice. By the end of the XX — beginning of the XXI century, the West begins processes that can be described as the beginning of the transition from modern to postmodern. The transformation of society’s religiosity is characterized by contradictory trends — the emergence of «hyperreal religions» (parody religions, Internet religions, alternative (non-traditional) religious movements), a return to archaic beliefs (neo-paganism), and the activation of fundamentalism. In the context of globalization and legal integration, these processes directly affect other countries (paradigmally still at the stage of modernity and even pre-modernity), which causes civilizational conflicts and destabilizes international relations. Taking these trends into account, as well as understanding the paradigmatic heterogeneity of both the world as a whole and Russian society, is necessary in the implementation of law-making and management activities, domestic and foreign policy.

Acknowledgments: The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 20-011-31235 “Non-traditio­nal religiosity as a form of social activity in the postmo­dern era”.