Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

For something to be sacred is to be somehow set apart. Where did this idea come from? It’s a little like all the discussions in the book around the origins of values, but harder to pin down. But perhaps we can find its origins again in beauty. Maybe some things just appear so absurdly beautiful that they seem not to belong to our ordinary world. We can see art reaching for this sometimes. The erotic imagery on some Indian temples are symbols of the divine. The pleasures of erotic love are showing us that the true nature of the universe is a pleasure that can never quite find its full expression — it is too far beyond our everyday lives. But some things on Earth are close, and hence, are sacred.

Enchantment

The problem with the idea of the sacred is really about why one thing can be sacred, yet another thing is profane, or ‘neutral’. Without a God, there is only the suspicion that we must decide on this for oursleves. But with a God — or at least a creator God — there seems no reason why everything should not be considered sacred. Enchantment though is about our response to the sacred. What if there were no sense of the sacred in human life? Well, that would surely be bad enough. But what if there were a sacred, but no-one who understood it, or appreciated it? That seems even worse. The sacred only makes sense if there are people around to be enchanted by it. The sacred only makes sense if there are people who will protect it and nourish it.

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