The sense of duty of future doctors against the background of their attitude to philosophical and religious ideas: results of a questionnaire survey of the Bogomolets National Medical University students

Abstract

The fate of various ideas in the history of mankind is truly unexpected. Unexpected are both the improvement (or simply change) of their content and historical changes in the perception of ideas by different strata and groups of the population (professional, age, religious, etc.). Ideas are very flexible and plastic. Even if there are certain reasons that “preserve” the content of some ideas (for example, the ideas of religious teachings should be immutable), the historical changes still may occur in the interpretation of these ideas, their understanding, their social or ideological role. History almost does not know permanence and immutability. The application of the ideas with most stable content is variable and unstable. Religion is the bearer and disseminator of ideas that, according to religious interpretation, should be invulnerable to change: religious thinkers appeal to the eternal supernatural source of religious ideas. But religious ideas also undergo some changes. Thus, the teachings of Thomas Aquinas were considered to have a supernatural source, and the thinker himself received in the Catholic Church, in addition to the status of a saint, the title of “angelic doctor”, which implied the impossibility of improving the ideas of Thomism. But within the Catholic Church itself, neo-Thomism arose: the need for change and improvement, if not of the teachings themselves, then of their understanding and interpretation, the
need of which turned out to be stronger than the stability allegedly caused by supernatural perfection. New trends, new teachings arise in a wide variety of religions - both Western and Eastern, they arise even where the innovations seem impossible. Therefore, not only changes, but also the historical stability of certain views and ideas is a problem that requires awareness. Medical students, in their majority, quite unexpectedly refused (during a survey on religion understanding and attitude towards religion) to recognize the “deep philosophical ideas” of religions as outdated. The fact that it was precisely the philosophical ideas of religions that were discussed further exacerbates the problem: after all, philosophy is often, among other things, a sphere of rational discussion, which, unlike sacred teachings, causes and experiences continuous changes and improvements. This survey is devoted to describing such an unexpected statistical result and attempts to draw conclusions from it.