The work is devoted to philosophical and legal comprehension of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The historical preconditions for the development and establishment of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion are set forth.
The dissertation is a comprehensive philosophical and legal study of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The main directions of the research are outlined; the circle of philosophers, thinkers, theorists, jurists has been outlined, which made a significant contribution to its semantic content.
The research is based on its own methodology, which consists of general and special-scientific methods and methods of research. The paper uses systematization and generalization, hermeneutic, terminological principle, dialectic method, comparison, deduction, axiological, hypothetical method, method of analysis and synthesis, idealization, abstraction, comparison, systematic method, principle of general communication and interdependence, historical and logical methods .
A coherent definition of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is formed through an analysis of its constituent parts. The analysis of philosophical and legal views in different historical periods on the law analyzed by us is carried out. It is proved that the most integral part of his paradigm was formed in the Renaissance. The jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights on cases concerning the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is generalized, it is confirmed that legal views of judges are based on the philosophy of liberalism with its emphasis on the primacy of individual rights and personal autonomy with respect to other values, first of all communitarian. The present state of realization of this right in Ukraine is investigated and recommendations for improving the level of its legislative regulation through the prism of human values are worked out. The philosophical and legal postulates of the development of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion are substantiated. They take into account the requirements and realities of the XXI century in our country, namely, such as unambiguousness and indisputability, value, system-forming character.
The main problems in the field of philosophical comprehension of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, which are now in the literature, are analyzed. Thus, by formulating the definition of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, researchers often resort to so-called formal-logical concept, which is based on the elemental analysis of the words "thought", "conscience", "religion". However, our analysis suggests that the expression "the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" is a phraseological unit, that is, inseparable unity, the meaning of which cannot be reduced to the usual sum of its constituent words.
The emphasis is placed on the fact that the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion must first of all be considered in the general human context as the highest social value, which is in close connection with the ideological existence of the individual and allows to reach agreement between groups of people with different worldviews.
The author convincingly argues that today the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is the most important intimate-personal component of the realization of all other rights in the spiritual sphere (religion, atheism, etc.). It is an opportunity for a person to receive, analyse, and distribute a certain amount of information, primarily of religious content, in order to raise awareness, first of all, of the spiritual world, the conscious perception of the content of the doctrine, the realization of certain practical skills and abilities to practice it.
The liberal-individualist approach to dealing with cases by the European Court of Justice makes it possible to recognize the idea of the possibility of distinguishing between the public and private spheres of public life, and also to recognize the usefulness of limiting the scope of government powers to the public sphere.
Key words: the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, paradigm, philosophical and legal views, postulates, individual law, European Court of Human Rights, philosophy of liberalism, values, communitarian, system-forming character
