Experiencing the sacred

Roger Scruton describes what is sacred and beyond, notes Sudhamahi Regunathan

December 18, 2014 07:30 pm | Updated 07:30 pm IST

Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton

Philosopher Roger Scruton says the experience that art provides us offers a glimpse of the transcendental and that is what we all call sacred. It need or need not be associated with religion.

“When people say that for them this aspect of reality, this place, this person, this ritual, this state of mind is sacred, they mean by that, that a particular experience is very special. People all over the world make a difference between the sacred and the profane which has something to do with those things that are outside the world of ordinary experience and something that are a part of it…We want to know what it is to stand in awe of those experiences outside the ordinary world…” says Scruton.

“Entering a country church… not necessarily as a believer…and sensing this stored accumulated silence…to think about it as the product of prayer, the distillation of need, anxiety suffering and perhaps rejoicing too. …you seem to be facing into the transcendental…,” says Scruton as he leads us on to experiencing the sacred.

Scruton says the distinction we must make is between the sacred and the consecrated on one side and the desecrated on the other. He is convincing with a small example…why is pornography rejected by society? Because it desecrates sex. To understand this distinction is to understand the full moral law. Scruton admits, “Sacred is a human creation so we have different rituals and different moments of significance…”

“I argue that this experience is rooted in something that we cannot avoid, which is our experience of each other. When I look at you and engage in a dialogue I am not addressing the mouth, the eyes, the flesh but I am addressing something that is addressing me; something in you… What is it that? What is that you identify in the first person case as I and I identify in the second or third person as you? That thing is already, as it were, on the edge. That thing is already beyond what can be reached the ordinary space of events…there’s nothing that we can reach and get hold of….we are constantly looking beyond what is given to us in the reality of a given person’s presence. This is not something which we can put into the ordinary conceptual scheme. “

Scruton words it well when he says, “Imagination is not epistemologically empty… When we get to the limits of what we can get to know through the senses, then we have got to the limit. To go beyond that and get to know the transcendental is, in some sense, withheld from us…that is the whole argument of Kant’s first critique…even Kant says there is contained within a thought something that reaches beyond…is pointing beyond but it can’t actually get beyond…the role of imagination is to point beyond, to that which we cannot reach, but still we are in relation with. “When I look at a picture, say Mona Lisa, I see a collection of pigments spread across the canvas. But that is not all I see. I see in those pigments this extraordinary face which addresses me with an enigmatic smile….that has bewildered people down the centuries…if you like, that smile contains all things that are meaningful to me… all kinds of knowledge of myself that is made available to me in that look…”

Does the sense of reaching beyond have any underlying justification, validation? “It is the business of art to give it that validation. If you are a Kantian you have to stop before short of faith. Sacred occupies a space where reason stops. Reason stops at the threshold of the transcendental but you can still engage in it rationally. It is more the moral law...we make a space for it in our life…things that get dropped by scientific world view…space for colour, music, pictures, sounds, sequences…what we hear as melodies, harmonies, tension in music…”

Scruton thus concludes that like Kierkgard who wrote a million words on the subjectivity of truth and its “unsayability”, like Schopenhauer took it forward, Scruton believes the sacred is a silent presence in our world and maybe art takes us in that direction.

>Web link

sudhamahi@gmail.com

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.