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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
August 8, 2010
Transcendentalisms
Is anything sacred?We can eliminate most of the discussion that would usually follow that question, these days, by noting what it did not ask. The question was not, "Is anything still sacred today?" That would be a stupid question for at least two reasons. First, it unnecessarily presumes sacred things existed in the past. Second, it unnecessarily presumes that, like bread or even bottled ketchup, the sacred is time-sensitive and can be predictably stale-dated. Such presumptions are hardly rare in our self-conceited "secular" society. At the root of most, if not all, "progressive" thinking is the incredibly presumptuous notion that it is within human power to change anything we don't like -- including, ultimately, even the content of the past. And while there may be disputes about the precise direction of the "long march" forward, the notion that it must continue, and overcome opposition from "conservatives" and "reactionaries," is beyond dispute. This is, as it were, the "sacred" principle of the Left. Never embrace a position that is self-contradictory. My papa taught me this when I was a wee tot, and when I grew older I began to understand that the instruction was consequential. My own progression out of adolescent atheism had much to do with the detection of self-contradictions. And this was one of them: How can I reject the sacred, categorically, when the categorical rejection of the sacred itself requires something to be sacred? And the final giveaway. It involves a kind of solemn pledge ("I will accept nothing as sacred") that is in the exact nature of a sacrament, reverencing an abstract idea as holy, and securing it against violation. The pledge in itself creates a category for heresy and sacrilege: for if I ever did accept something as sacred, I would violate my creed, and desecrate my most solemn ideal. Nor could I fail to violate it, in the course of normal life. Practically, we must assume some things are sacred, simply to preclude such acts as gratuitously stomping on a kitten (when no one is looking so we don't get caught). But at a much simpler level, I do not think my reader will meet an atheist so pure that he does not possess avowedly sacred objects. And nothing so obvious as a good luck charm; rather, possessions which, through association with persons or past events -- even a high price tag -- have acquired a numinous aura, and would require something very like pain to discard. There are (otherwise useless) things we cannot throw out because we find them beautiful, sometimes extremely so. They are a source of joy whenever encountered. Keats famously noted this, though as a scholar of a later generation observed, the sort of Grecian urn Keats admired struck him as rather ugly. "Beauty," like the sacred, might be in the eye of the beholder. But as we should quickly realize, this is rot -- not the analogy between the beautiful and the sacred, but the idea that these "transcendentals" are arbitrarily assigned. Again and again we dig up, out of the cold forgetful earth, objects from distant civilizations. And we know immediately something about them through our common apprehension of some aesthetic quality. It needn't be a formal work of art, and indeed, the post-Christian or irreligious mind is easily confused, and tricked into the habit of elevating such apparently "spiritual" things as art and poetry into formal sacred status (demanding public subsidy). We forget that, for instance, the very idea of "fine art" is a modern invention; and that most of the older art in our museums was created for quite other purposes than to hang on a wall and be reverenced by museum customers. What most interests me about the sacred is that it seems to cross over the triune "Platonic transcendentals" -- the good, the true, the beautiful -- and to lie "behind" all three. Plato himself seems articulately to grasp this, and to be made aware of the unity of the Divine through the contemplation of such transcendentals -- that is, properties shared by all things, that transcend their differentiating individual properties. And properties that cannot be imaginary, for they draw a response from all men, or more precisely, all those who are not catastrophically obtuse, or have not wilfully blinded themselves. We respond, inwardly, to what we apprehend as sacred, however partially we apprehend it. Or to put it another way, our souls resonate in the presence of moral, ethical, and aesthetic sanctity. The sacred can be denied, but so can the sun, and it still rises every morning. It belongs to religion, and is explained through religious doctrine, yet even outside the reach of formal religious practice, it is what it is. And therefore, the most resolutely "secular" person is capable of knowing that some things are, and must necessarily be, sacred. As to what is sacred, or what is not, this column ends after 860 words. It will have earned the hallowed "two cents" if it encourages my reader to think about such things. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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