Humanities & Social Sciences 1 (2015 8) 52-63 ~ ~ ~ УДК 2:168.1 On Universal Defi nition of Religion Daniil V. Pivovarov* Ural Federal University 51, Lenin Str., Ekaterinburg, 620083, Russia Received 30.10.2014, received in revised form 15.11.2014, accepted 06.12.2014 Eclecticism, sophistry and dialectics as methods of determining the essence of religion are mutually compared. <...> It is proved that the defi nition of V. S. Solovyov – “religion is a human relationship with the Absolute”- is universal and meets the requirements of dialectics. <...> It is proposed that there are the objective and subjective levels of religiosity. <...> With respect to the subjective religiosity the author defi nes religion as a form of individual and public consciousness which sacralizes the human relationship with the Absolute. <...> The main question of any religion, based on this defi nition, is formulated. <...> Keywords: eclecticism, sophistry and dialectics, the V. S. Solovyov’s defi nition of religion, the Absolute, objective and subjective religiosity, the basic question of religion. <...> For whatever reasons, eclecticism, according to its critics, are primarily in the fact that it unites artifi cially disparate facts and ideas, evaluates them as equally important, and it does not emit the most important feature of the studied object. <...> A scientist-sophist, in contrast, selects from the many features of his subject only some one sign, and he declares that it to solve this diffi cult problem some religious scholars choose eclecticism, the second – the method of sophistry, and others – dialectics as the antithesis of eclecticism and sophistry. <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: daniil-pivovarov@yandex.ru # 52 # is the studied phenomena, and unconditional, principal and leading. <...> The American scientist suggests instead of the theme of ontological essence of religion to study another, taxonomic, theme of classifi cation of religions, since the actual religious behavior does not seem to theoretical construct “religion”(Smith, 1998). <...> However, we should not be unconditionally agree with Smith’s proposal, as a well-known logic-methodological rule states that any correct classifi cation should be based only on a single logical basis; “summative” classifi cation based on different logical grounds is invalid. <...> In their view, in contrast to the useless pursuit of a unifi ed <...>