PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSION OF RITUAL: RITUAL AS A LANGUAGE GAME.

The present article describes the phenomenon ritual with relation to modern philosophical discourse. The categories ritual and the adjoining categories rite and ceremony are distinguished. Ritual is a junction to super reality; rite is a junction, too, but a junction to members of social group, not to super reality. From a certain viewpoint we can say that rite is a form of ritual, but it does not reflect the essence of the ritual. Rite can be considered as one of the elements of the ritual. In this case, ritual is divisible into two component parts: the rite - when members of the ritual join a community; and the internal part - when members of the ritual join super reality and they are united by a sacred symbol. Ceremony is a variety of rite and has all its characteristics, but it is more solemn. Also in human consciousness ceremony is associated with the religious sphere to a lesser degree. Ritual is also examined as a language game. It can be analysed at three levels - semantic, syntactic and pragmatic. Ritual as a language has ideal schemes that can change in practical realisation. We can study two levels of ritual as a language game: the ideal schemes and practical displays of language games, which differ in connotations. But a ritual differs from other language games. The language of ritual always leads to human unity in a common historical time and space. Correspondingly, any member should understand the language game of ritual, because it addresses to the symbolic universe and our subconsciousness. The result of the ordinary language game is impossible to forecast. But ritual is a strict formalized convention; it has a predictable result defined from the very beginning. A casual observer, not participating in ritual can misunderstand the language game of ritual. Participants of the ritual process understand it by intuition or with the help of a mediator (priest, clergyman or other). In that case the aim of researchers is to explicate the rules and conventions of the language game of ritual. But to solve these tasks it is necessary to pick out universal structures of ritual acts. It is possible in the framework of language philosophy. Studying ritual as a language game is impossible without discourse-analysis, which allows reaching integrity in research of ritual

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