Axiological foundations of local civilizations: formation of the concept of freedom in philosophical and religious systems

The subject of the study is the formation and content of ideas about freedom in the most significant philosophical and religious traditions and the outline of its links with modernity. Such traditions determine the nature of local civilizations. Understanding the unarticulated but latently present senses, mutual consideration of the hierarchies of values of large human communities can contribute to improving the quality of intercultural and intercivilizational dialogue. In each of the considered teachings, "freedom" turns out to be unique, and often incomparable. Moreover in such traditions as Confucianism and Taoism the category is implicit. The understanding of "freedom" is traced in the ancient tradition, starting with Homer, the period of the European Middle Ages, the views of representatives of various branches of Arab-Muslim thought, Hinduism and Buddhism. A synthesis of the approaches of dialectical ascent (using antinomic categories) and socio-cultural comparison is used. In case the target categories of "freedom", "free will", "freedom for", "freedom from" are not directly manifested, its reconstruction is carried out by means of analytical explication. The core result is the identification of the fact of incomparability of concepts of freedom in different traditions, and hence the non-universal nature of the globalization is stated. Although liberal project is extremely successful nowadays, in the long term it is likely to be curtailed as other cultural and philosophical doctrines do not elaborate similar content and other values are in their focus. The special contribution of the author is in posing the question of multi-civilizational axiological comparison, the development of methodology of which is a significant and highly relevant research task, as well as the initial testing of the methodology.