CONCEPTUAL METAFORA AS A WAY OF SACRED COGNITION

Abstract

Cognitive metaphor plays an important role in the process of conceptualization of knowledge and experience. An epistemological approach to the study of a conceptual metaphor presupposes a view of this phenomenon as a necessary form of cognition, connected with the explanatory limitation of scientific paradigms. The basic metaphor is considered as the main system-forming worldview form of the conceptualization of being, which, by virtue of its complex mental nature, allows for illogicality in the unification of referents of various knowledge fields. The basic metaphorical translations of religious knowledge are examined on the basis of writing monuments of the Eastern Slavs.
The categories of personification, instrumentality, rationality / irrationality, etc., important in the identification of God, and manifested in the basic and translating metaphors of religious discourse, testify, in our view, to the critical type of thinking. This contradicts the basic tenet of religion – the doctrine is taken on the faith, and faith does not presuppose reflection, analysis of the acquired knowledge, connection of the intellect to the comprehension of the unknown, etc. However, the use of basic analogies as mental constructs of consciousness and their numerous translations in the early Christian theological context determines, in our opinion, the nature of this phenomenon as an active process of conceptualization of knowledge and this knowledge assessment in the system of axiological culture orientations, which is peculiar to critical thinking. Supplementing it with intuitive and heuristic forms of cognition, a person tries to penetrate into the divine essence and thereby understand his mission in the Universe.
A broad presentation of basic theological metaphors is carried out by key translations, whose epistemological and heuristic power is beyond doubt. The basic model is initial and achronic, in contrast to translating (temporary) paradigmatic models that correspond to the axiological system of a particular cultural paradigm. The knowledge of God essence is explicitly represented in religious texts with the help of translating metaphors of the surface level.