The Idea of Good in 19th–20th Centuries Russian Religious Philosophy

Introduction. The article is devoted to the consideration of the idea of the good in Russian religious philosophy of the period of XIX-XX centuries, as well as to the comprehension of the main approaches to the resolution of the problematic interaction between rational and moral. The relevance of the work is conditioned, firstly, by the urgent epistemological problematics, in the context of the development of artificial intelligence again addressing the question of the limits of the possibilities of human cognition, and secondly, by the ethical, invariably addressed to the theme of the nature of evil, as well as ways to reduce the destructive moments of human existence. The work involves a set of approaches and methods, the most significant of which are hermeneutic, structural-functional and systemic. Content. In the study, based on the analysis of the complex of Russian religious-philosophical works of the XIX-XX centuries, in the process of comprehension of the rationality of religious philosophy and the definition of the idea of the good in the perspective of this rationality, three main approaches to the resolution of the designated problematics are revealed: ‘classical’, where Reason and Good are understood as identical; ‘non-classical’, in which rational and ethical are understood as conditionally dependent on each other, that is, although in their noumena they are one, but within the manifested world they act separately; and the approach that understands these spheres as independent, ‘indifferent’. Each of these ways formulates a special understanding of the possibilities of human cognition (in the first case, cognition is limited by the manifested world; in the second case, it depends only on a person's inner aspiration; in the third case, actual cognition is considered impossible, only spiritual comprehension); the relationship between cognitive abilities and the inner world of a person (the ‘classical’ approach implies a single movement of all human abilities; the ‘non-classical’ approach - the efforts of will and reason; the ‘indifferent’ approach emphasises the role of the spiritual world); and the relationship between cognitive abilities and the inner world of a person (the ‘classical’ approach implies a single movement of all human abilities; the ‘non-classical’ approach - the efforts of will and reason; the ‘indifferent’ approach emphasises the role of the spiritual world). Conclusions. The result of the study is the formulation of the main points of the three paths, the identification of their implications and perspectives, as well as the identification of difficulties related to the internal logic of each of them, thus marking the future of research in this vein.