Review of the international scientific and practical conference “Modern ontology - XI: ontology and religion”(Saint Petersburg, Volgograd, June 26-30, 2023)

The review of the international scientific and practical conference “Modern Ontology - XI: Ontology and Religion”, which took place from June 26 to June 30 at the Saint Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation and Volgograd State University, is presented. The speeches of the conference participants were devoted to several significant topics on the stated issues. The first thematic block consisted of theoretical issues of the relationship between ontology and religion. Within the framework of this topic, the plenary report of P.M. Kolychev’s “Ontology and religion”, in which theology was considered as part of ontology became the key one. The second thematic block included the problems of human existence in the context of religion. Within the framework of this topic, S.B. Tokareva in the plenary report “Ontological consequences of human and angelic freedom: a modal approach” examined the interpretations of the real, possible and necessary, analyzed the ontological consequences of human and angelic freedom. Within the framework of the third thematic block, in which the problems of the relationship between ontology and religion were discussed in a historical and philosophical retrospective, the most interesting was the plenary report of I.I. Evlampiev “The problem of creation and the status of nothing in the metaphysics of mystical Pantheism”, which presented an original view on the development of the concepts of creation in the history of Christian thought. The fourth thematic block covered the problems of theory and practice of ontology. Within the framework of the conference, a fruitful discussion was held on the topic “What kind of philosophy do we need?”, dedicated to the problems of teaching philosophy for non-philosophical specialties. Most of the participants supported the idea of developing a unified program of a general philosophy course based on the domestic (including Soviet period) experience of teaching this discipline. The following structure of the philosophy course is proposed: 1) ontology; 2) philosophy of natural science; 3) philosophy of socio-anthropological reality; 4) philosophy of religion.