Search results
Feb 15, 2009 · If there is nothing that is originally sacred, then there is nothing that is derivatively sacred either. One obvious problem with Hitchens' position is that it is by no means obvious that there is nothing sacred.
- Is Nothing Sacred
And even if there were to be something called sacred, we...
- What Isis Really Wants
Required reading. From The Atlantic, by Graeme Wood. (HT:...
- The China Convergence
This Substack piece by N. S. Lyons is very long but very...
- Facing Reality
Here is another telling scrap of evidence: The National...
- Edith Stein
Top o' the Stack.. August 9th is the feast day of St....
- David Brooks
Now there was evidence of election fraud in the 2020...
- Walk Away Campaign
Maverick Philosopher Footnotes to Plato from the foothills...
- Devon Archer
There's a Moon Out Tonight; The Road to One-Party Rule; The...
- Is Nothing Sacred
A central tenet of Durkheim’s theory of religion is the distinction between the sacred and the profane. According to Durkheim, all religions make this distinction, ...
- Overview
- The emergence of the concept of the sacred
- Sacred–profane and other dichotomies
- Ambivalence in man’s response to the sacred
sacred, the power, being, or realm understood by religious persons to be at the core of existence and to have a transformative effect on their lives and destinies. Other terms, such as holy, divine, transcendent, ultimate being (or ultimate reality), mystery, and perfection (or purity) have been used for this domain. “Sacred” is also an important technical term in the scholarly study and interpretation of religions.
For a discussion of dogmatic interpretations of the divine as a being or force, see doctrine and dogma.
It was during the first quarter of the 20th century that the concept of the sacred became dominant in the comparative study of religions. Nathan Söderblom, an eminent Swedish churchman and historian of religions, asserted in 1913 that the central notion of religion was “holiness” and that the distinction between sacred and profane was basic to all “real” religious life. In 1917 Rudolf Otto’s Heilige (Eng. trans., The Idea of the Holy, 1923) appeared and exercised a great influence on the study of religion through its description of religious man’s experience of the “numinous” (a mysterious, majestic presence inspiring dread and fascination), which Otto, a German theologian and historian of religions, claimed, could not be derived from anything other than an a priori sacred reality. Other scholars who used the notion of sacred as an important interpretive term during this period included the sociologist Émile Durkheim in France, and the psychologist-philosopher Max Scheler in Germany. For Durkheim, sacredness referred to those things in society that were forbidden or set apart; and since these sacred things were set apart by society, the sacred force, he concluded, was society itself. In contrast to this understanding of the nature of the sacred, Scheler argued that the sacred (or infinite) was not limited to the experience of a finite object. While Scheler did not agree with Otto’s claim that the holy is experienced through a radically different kind of awareness, he did agree with Otto that the awareness of the sacred is not simply the result of conditioning social and psychological forces. Though he criticized Friedrich Schleiermacher, an early 19th-century Protestant theologian, for being too subjective in his definition of religion as “the consciousness of being absolutely dependent on God,” Otto was indebted to him in working out the idea of the holy. Söderblom recorded his dependence on the scholarship of the history of religions (Religionswissenschaft), which had been a growing discipline in European universities for about half a century; Durkheim had access to two decades of scholarship on nonliterate peoples, some of which was an account of actual fieldwork. Scheler combined the interests of an empirical scientist with a philosophical effort that followed in the tradition of 19th-century attempts to relate human experiences to the concept of a reality (essence) that underlies human thoughts and activities.
Since the first quarter of the 20th century many historians of religions have accepted the notion of the sacred and of sacred events, places, people, and acts as being central in religious life if not indeed the essential reality in religious life. For example, phenomenologists of religion such as Gerardus van der Leeuw and W. Brede Kristensen have considered the sacred (holy) as central and have organized the material in their systematic works around the (transcendent) object and (human) subject of sacred (cultic) activity, together with a consideration of the forms and symbols of the sacred. Such historians of religions as Friedrich Heiler and Gustav Mensching organized their material according to the nature of the sacred, its forms and structural types. Significant contributions to the analysis and elaboration of the sacred have been made by Roger Caillois, a sociologist, and by Mircea Eliade, an eminent historian of religions.
The term sacred has been used from a wide variety of perspectives and given varying descriptive and evaluative connotations by scholars seeking to interpret the materials provided by anthropology and the history of religions. In these different interpretations, however, common characteristics were recognized in the sacred, as it is understood by participant individuals and groups: it is separated from the common (profane) world; it expresses the ultimate total value and meaning of life; and it is the eternal reality, which is recognized to have been before it was known and to be known in a way different from that through which common things are known.
The term sacred comes from Latin sacer (“set off, restricted”). A person or thing was designated as sacred when it was unique or extraordinary. Closely related to sacer is numen (“mysterious power, god”). The term numinous is used at present as a description of the sacred to indicate its power, before which man trembles. Various terms from different traditions have been recognized as correlates of sacer: Greek hagios, Hebrew qadosh, Polynesian tapu, Arabic ḥaram (not to be confused with ḥarām, “forbidden”); correlates of numen include the Melanesian mana, the Sioux wakanda, old German haminja (luck), and Sanskrit Brahman.
Exclusive academic rate for students! Save 67% on Britannica Premium.
Learn More
Because the sacred contains notions both of a positive, creative power and a danger that requires stringent prohibitions, the common human reaction is both fear and fascination. Otto elaborated his understanding of the holy from this basic ambiguity. Only the sacred can fulfill man’s deepest needs and hopes; thus, the reverence that man shows to the sacred is composed both of trust and terror. On the one hand, the sacred is the limit of human effort both in the sense of that which meets human frailty and that which prohibits human activity; on the other hand, it is the unlimited possibility that draws mankind beyond the limiting temporal–spacial structures that are constituents of human existence.
Not only is there an ambivalence in the individual’s reaction to the numinous quality of the sacred but the restrictions, the tabus, can be expressive of the creative power of the sacred. Caillois has described at length the social mechanism of nonliterate societies, in which the group is divided into two complementary subgroups (moieties), and has interpreted the tabus and the necessary interrelationship of the moieties as expressions of sacredness. Whatever is sacred and restricted for one group is “free” for the other group. In a number of respects—e.g., in supplying certain goods, food, and wives—each group is dependent on the other for elemental needs. Here the sacred is seen to be manifested in the order of the social–physical universe, in which these tribal members live. To disrupt this order, this natural harmony, would be sacrilege, and the culprit would be severely punished. In this understanding of the sacred, a person is, by nature, one of a pair; he is never complete as a single unit. Reality is experienced as one of prescribed relationships, some of these being vertical, hierarchical relationships and others being horizontal, corresponding relationships.
- Frederick J. Streng
The interest of sociologists in the social significance of the sacred is largely derived from the concerns of the subdiscipline of the sociology of religion. However, considerable disagreement exists as to the precise social origins of that which is designated sacred.
Oct 7, 2023 · In the heart of religious practices lies a profound concept: the sacred. This elusive term often evokes a sense of reverence and awe. But what exactly does it mean for something to be sacred, and how does it differ from our everyday secular experiences?
Oct 28, 2021 · Émile Durkheim believed that society is underpinned by the religious principle that some things are “sacred” and some things are “profane.” The sacred is anything that we set apart from the...
People also ask
Is there a derivatively sacred thing?
Where does the word sacred come from?
What is the social significance of the Sacred?
Why is the Sacred Sacred?
What if nothing is sacred?
What is sacred in sociology?
Aug 10, 2017 · Consideration of anthropology and ethology of art reveals a relationship between skill and the sacred, which clarifies the origin and function of 'sacrality' as a cognitive experience characteristic of, but not exclusive to, religious behaviour.
