Post-, trans-, hyper-sin

Abstract

The article dedicated to the problem of sin and sinfulness, and the person’s status in contemporary culture. For achieving this goal the author provides the comparative analysis of the two cultural contexts in relation to the problem of sin, namely, of the contemporary media space of the Internet and the religious situation of the 19th century. Based on the understanding of the sinfulness of the Danish philosopher S. Kierkegaard for who a sin is ontological and the underlying characteristics of a person in constant “dialogue” with God, the author makes the comparison to how the sin is treated in modern media space from social media to the message of Pope addressed to journalists. In contrast to the cultural situation of the nineteenth century, which was condensed in the understanding of sin in Kierkegaard’s religious philosophy, the modern secular world of the Internet and media zones use the term of sin not as an ontological marker, but only as a metaphor, a rhetorical figure. This metaphor has no significant existential and ontological status in comparison with the understanding of sin in the age of Kierkegaard. Modern understanding of sin is not comparable to the sensations, spiritual experiences, and suffering religious thinker of the nineteenth century forms a consciousness of a modern man, deprived of essential imperatives. Modern man does not know of any true sin, does not see pain, suffering, hunger, i.e., deprived of the most important existential orientations that have shaped a spirituality of a man until the mid 20th century. Accordingly, the modern model of the assembly of human consciousness is radically different from how was created a religious traditionalist consciousness for which sin, suffering, pain, and death were deep existential imperatives.

Keywords:

sin, sinfulness, contemporary culture, Søren Kierkegaard