Ryazanova Svetlana
The article is devoted to the main tendencies in contemporary religious studies and to the principles of their coexistence with other humanitarian disciplines including the indication of common and particular features of this process. The cultural and civilization factors, which influence formation, self-determination and development of religious studies, are considered. The most important problems of the genesis and the evolution of categories, which carry out demarcation functions for philosophy of religion and related disciplines, are defined. A number of central categories, which structure the space of discipline and have impact over the functioning of related humanitarian subjects – religion, myth, new religiousness, freedom of worship – is allocated. Particular attention is paid to semantic basis of the formation of categories, as well as to principles of classification of definitions and limits of interpretation of used categories and terms. Admissible ways of diminishing the shortage of universal definitions in religious studies are defined: expansion of research field; change of research priorities; use of inter-disciplinarily approach; pragmatism in selection of categories; situational approach in selection of basic definitions.
Keywords: religion, myth, religious studies, paradigm, scientific approach.