Парадигмалният подход за анализ на християнските ценностно-светогледни образци и нагласи в контекста на идеите на Томас Кун
The Paradigmatic Approach for the Analysis of Christian Values – Weltanschauung Patterns and Arrangements in the Context of Ideas of Thomas Kuhn

Summary/Abstract: This article explains some specific methodological considerations brought up by Hans Küng, about the adoption of Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory for analysis of the Christian world view (Weltansicht) and value adjustments, as a part of an interdisciplinary framework of a dissertation in the field of philosophy of religion. Küng’s theoretical model for better understanding of Christianity as an evolution of different Christian paradigms, „constellations“ and a macro paradigm“ (Theology for the Third Milennium, 1988; Yes to a Global Ethic, 1996) here is interpreted in the context of the late theoretical works of Thomas Kuhn, which analyze the meaning of his concept of paradigm (Postscript 1969, Second Thoughts of Pradigm). The study of the applicability of Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigm in the analyses of Christianity points out the specific cognitive, axiological and hermeneutic aspects of Kuhn’s late theoretical works. We propose a new model for understanding the specific meaning of the Christian paradigms in the light of the four components of the paradigm as a disciplinary matrix: symbolic generalizations, metaphysical presumptions, values and exemplars, which could be understood also in the context of Carl G. Jung and Gustav Mensching’s psychological analyses of religion. Kuhn’s idea that the paradigm could neverbe static and complete, but is always subjected to dynamic debates and spontaneous translations during communication within the community that upholds it, is interpreted in the filed of Christos Yanaras Eastern Orthodox adoption of Lacan’s views about the human personality (prosopon in Yanaras’s philosophy), which could be developed only through active conversation with the Otherness. Other specificity of the proposed method for analysis brings to the fore that Christian paradigms are revealed, not only in the theological and institutional interprepations of the church elites, but also in egalitarian everydaylife Christianity (Bahtin, Levi-Straus, Le Goff, Kirov and Shivarov, David Lehman). These theoretical considerations lead to a conclusion thet the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic world view and value adjustments could be analyzed, not as totally different Christian paradigms as Hans Kung claims, but rather as different translations of one common apostolical paradigm, much like Lutheranism and Calcinism, which are known as two different translations of one common Protestant world view, ethical model and paradigm.

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