Fundamentalism: A Scientific Term or a Pejorative Label? On Some Aspects of the Non-Academic Use of the Term

The article is devoted to a critical analysis of the validity of the extended use of the term “fundamentalism” mainly in non-academic sources. In recent decades, fundamentalism has been used to refer to a wide range of social phenomena and ideologies that turn out to be conservative upon examination, and the label of fundamentalism serves as an opportunity to give the discussed subject a negative connotation that has formed among a wide range of people due to war on radical terrorist groups, some of which actually professed the ideology of Islamism. The author conducts a sociophilosophical analysis of the phenomenon of fundamentalism, drawing a clear and justified line that outlines the scope of the concept and allows it to be separated from superficially similar phenomena, such as conservatism.