Confessional Grounds in Culture, Philosophy, and Art

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify the peculiarities of the repentance, penitence, and confession concepts’ grounds in art and philosophy, to characterise examples of the reflection of these concepts in art. Research relevance. A necessary component of philosophical reasoning, cultural studies and everyday life practices is the rethinking of many concepts of moral consciousness. Reasoning on ethical values is essential in all cultures and at all times. The topics of moral guest, self-deepening and purification are relevant today. Turning to the analysis of the reflection of such concepts as confession, repentance, penitence in culture and art requires research attention. The research methodology is based on general scientific and special methods of knowledge, in particular analysis, synthesis, the logical method and the method of generalisation. The scientific novelty is in revealing the concept of repentance in the confessional grounds of philosophy and literature — as a primordial and constant concern of the human spirit for itself. Conclusions. It is revealed that remorse arises when, having committed a fundamentally wrong act, a person recognises it as a violation of the moral law and condemns it, but does not have the strength to condemn themself so much as to renounce entirely the passion that led to the crime, so they do not seek real transformations of their soul. The article has demonstrated that spiritual quest, a person’s ascent through moral self-improvement, occur in a person at any period of their life. It is proved that the emphasis on conscience, a person’s moral self-purification, repentance has been inherent in the national cultural tradition since Kyivan Rus. And in the following centuries, this moral attitude was decisive in the spiritual life of our ancestors many times, returning hope in difficult historical moments. It is generalised that a sincere search for the ways of the good and genuine repentance and confession is possible to others and oneself.