Between faith and doubt: the existential structure of religious consciousness under the conditions of the worldview crisis of contemporary man

Abstract

The article presents a philosophical analysis of the worldview crisis as an existential form of transformation of contemporary religious consciousness. The subject of the study is the structural interrelation between faith and doubt within the conditions of modern pluralism. The aim of the paper is to conceptualize the worldview crisis not merely as a sociocultural phenomenon but as a disruption of the internal coherence of worldview as a multi-level structure of personal self-determination, including ontological, axiological, and existential dimensions. The methodological basis of the research combines existential-phenomenological analysis, hermeneutical reconstruction of classical and contemporary philosophical texts, and conceptual clarification of the notions of faith, doubt, worldview, and religious consciousness. The relevance of the study is determined by the transformation of the “conditions of belief” in late modernity and the growing reflexivity of the subject in secular and post-secular contexts. The scientific novelty lies in interpreting the worldview crisis as an internally structured existential tension rather than as a mere decline of religiosity. A comparative analysis of Western and Ukrainian philosophical traditions reveals significant differences in the understanding of worldview. While Charles Taylor emphasizes historically conditioned “conditions of belief,” Ukrainian philosophers Myroslav Popovych and Serhii Krymskyi interpret worldview as an inner spiritual structure of the person. Drawing on the ideas of Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, and William James, the article demonstrates that doubt should not be understood as the negation of faith but as its structural component in the context of secular modernity. The study concludes that the contemporary worldview crisis is ambivalent: it reflects the destabilization of traditional meaning structures while simultaneously opening the possibility for a new spiritual configuration and a reflective, existentially grounded form of faith. The practical significance of the research lies in clarifying the conceptual foundations for further studies in philosophy of religion and in contributing to contemporary discussions on religious self-determination in pluralistic societies.