Syncretism is a combination of heterogeneous elements within one conceptual system

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Syncretism is a connection (synkretismos - mixing, merging) of heterogeneous elements. A concept from the field of psychology, culture and art. Most often you can hear about the syncretism of children's, religious (and religious cult) and primitive thinking (and primitive culture).

Child syncretism

In the psychology of preschool children, syncretism is the ability for an integrated perception of various concepts and categories that are not related to each other. Due to the lack of information about the surrounding world, the child builds his own models. In these constructions, objective connections are replaced by subjective ones, and impression is used instead of knowledge. In the first years of life, the child is not yet accustomed to logical constructions, so his reasoning is sometimes illogical even for his own conceptual system.

Religious syncretism

With regard to religious (mythological) thinking, syncretism is a combination in one mind of dogmas (often mutually exclusive) from different religious schools, as well as objective ideas aboutreality with a mythological description of the world. To a lesser extent, the teachings that have existed for centuries without extraneous influences are syncretic. Syncretic is Christianity, in which the Old and New Testaments are canonized on an equal footing. To an even greater extent, Russian Orthodoxy is syncretic, where Christianity is closely fused with pagan ideas. The mixing of peoples and, as a result, cultural traditions in the modern world makes religious ideas more and more syncretic. The emergence in the last hundred years of a huge number of all kinds of sects, schools, occult movements is partly due to the desire of religious people, prone to reflection, to create a consistent logical description of the world and resolve the internal conflict.

Artistic syncretism

The fusion of cultures and traditions also gives rise to syncretism in art, which for many centuries has moved towards ever narrower specialization. A modern artist/writer/musician is limited by the limits of one form, one genre. New works are born at the intersection of different cultures, different genres and types of art.

Primal syncretism

It is not entirely correct to liken primitive thinking to children's thinking. In the absence of objective knowledge, primitive man tends to mythologize reality, but otherwise his thinking is much more rational than that of many of our contemporaries. Otherwise, he simply will not survive. In primitive thinking, syncretism is a whole perception of the world, in which the individual does notdistinguishes himself neither from his own community, nor from nature in general. Hence the most ancient prototypes of religions - animism, totemism. There is practically no division of functions within the community, no professional specialization. Each is multifunctional. An illustration of such multifunctionality is the syncretism of primitive art: dance, singing, playing a musical instrument, cult drawings are combined in a single ritual action performed by the whole tribe, inseparable from mythology and from solving practical problems (healing the sick, good luck hunting, etc.).