The political sacred and the holiness of life itself

This article reflects on Agamben’s formulation of the sacred within the political order of the West, contrasting this with the Durkheim/Bellah view of the sacred/profane opposition, and then presenting two arguments that reduction of the sacred to the political is insufficient, one a form of biologi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Religion
Main Author: Flood, Gavin 1954- (Author)
Format: Electronic/Print Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group [2017]
In: Religion
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Agamben, Giorgio 1942- / The Sacred / Political order / Holiness / Social psychology / Cognition
RelBib Classification:AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
AE Psychology of religion
Further subjects:B Holiness
B Profane
B Agamben
B Sacred
B Social cognition
Online Access: Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:This article reflects on Agamben’s formulation of the sacred within the political order of the West, contrasting this with the Durkheim/Bellah view of the sacred/profane opposition, and then presenting two arguments that reduction of the sacred to the political is insufficient, one a form of biological reductionism that seeks to locate the sacred within the common, biological nature of human life itself, the other an abductive argument for human transformation in terms of what Sloterdjik has called ‘vertical tension.’ This argument turns out to be one for locating holiness in the very notion of life itself that I wish to ground in the idea of social cognition.
ISSN:0048-721X
Contains:Enthalten in: Religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2017.1362727