In "The Soul of the World," philosopher Roger Scruton explores the profound human desire for and experience of the sacred. This thought-provoking book challenges the notion that science can explain everything about our existence and argues that there are aspects of human experience that can only be understood through the lens of religion and spirituality.
Scruton contends that while science provides valuable insights into the physical world, it falls short when it comes to explaining the deeper aspects of human consciousness, morality, and our search for meaning. He argues that we need both scientific and religious perspectives to fully comprehend the human experience and our place in the universe.
Throughout the book, Scruton examines various aspects of human culture, including art, music, architecture, and social relationships, to demonstrate how our yearning for the sacred manifests in different areas of life. He challenges readers to consider the limitations of a purely materialistic worldview and to embrace the importance of spiritual and transcendent experiences in shaping our understanding of reality.
The Limitations of Scientific Language
Science vs. Faith: A False Dichotomy
Scruton begins by addressing the common misconception that reason and faith are fundamentally opposed to each other. He argues that this view is a miscategorization of these two concepts. While reason is an intellectual pursuit aimed at accurately describing reality, religion is primarily an emotional pursuit that seeks to teach us how to live.
Although religions do include metaphysical beliefs, such as the idea of a divine creator, Scruton emphasizes that the emotional needs fulfilled by religion are far more important. These needs include the desire for sacrifice and obedience. By focusing solely on debunking religious beliefs through scientific language, we ignore the essential aspects of religion that speak to the human experience.
The Limits of Evolutionary Psychology
Scruton critiques the tendency of evolutionary psychology to explain social and cultural phenomena, including religion, as adaptations that helped our ancestors survive harsh environmental conditions. While this approach may explain why we have religious sentiment, it fails to address the content of our beliefs – what Scruton calls their "aboutness."
For example, evolutionary psychology cannot explain why many religions tend toward belief in a single God or why the concept of sacrifice is so prevalent across different faiths. These aspects of religion go beyond mere survival adaptations and speak to deeper human needs and experiences.
The Case of Incest Taboos
To illustrate the limitations of scientific explanations for human beliefs and behaviors, Scruton examines the taboo surrounding incest. While evolutionary psychologists argue that we're revolted by incest because it leads to poor genetic outcomes, this explanation doesn't account for the deep emotional and moral impact that the idea of incest has on people.
From a purely evolutionary perspective, a simple disgust response (similar to our reaction to rotten food) would be sufficient to deter incest. However, human cultures have developed complex myths, stories, and moral frameworks around the concept of incest that go far beyond a mere biological aversion.
Scruton points out that for some individuals, these moral reflections can even subvert the reproductive admonition, leading to a temptation for the forbidden – as seen in various mythological stories. This psychological complexity cannot be fully explained by evolutionary theories alone.
The Search for Transcendental Experiences
The Problem of God's "Real Presence"
Scruton delves into a longstanding religious problem that has puzzled Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions for centuries: the concept of God's "real presence." According to religious texts, God is both present in the physical world and communicates directly with believers, while also transcending the physical world and existing outside of space and time.
This paradox creates a tension for believers who seek to experience God directly while understanding that such an experience is, in some ways, impossible. Scruton argues that this tension is at the heart of religious practice, as people engage in rituals, prayers, and encounters with the sacred in an attempt to bridge the gap between the physical and transcendent realms.
Religion as Intersubjective Encounter
Scruton proposes that religion can be understood as a search for intersubjective encounters with the transcendental. He compares the religious person's approach to God with that of a ceremonial magician addressing the natural world. While the magician attempts to assert their will over nature, religious individuals seek a subject-to-subject encounter with a divine being.
This perspective helps explain why religious people are often less concerned with proving God's existence and more focused on establishing a personal relationship with the divine. The search for God, in this view, is a quest for a transcendent, timeless person with whom one can communicate and reason.
The Nature of Personhood
Scruton explores the philosophical question of what constitutes a person, arguing that persons are entities that straddle the line between object and subject. As objects, persons can be acted upon by the world, but they also refer to themselves in the first person – as "I" – which makes them subjects.
This dual nature of personhood leads to two distinct ways of describing human behavior:
- The biological or physical lens, which treats persons as objects influenced by external forces.
- The subjective lens, which examines the motivations behind a person's intentions, beliefs, and desires, treating their behavior as something to be understood rather than merely explained.
This distinction points to a fundamental cognitive dualism in how we view the world, which Scruton explores further in the book.
Cognitive Dualism: Two Ways of Understanding Reality
The Scientific Lens vs. The Interpersonal Lens
Scruton introduces the concept of cognitive dualism, which allows us to understand the world in two fundamentally different ways:
The scientific lens: This perspective focuses on objective, measurable phenomena and seeks to explain events through cause-and-effect relationships.
The interpersonal lens: This viewpoint considers the world of human experience, relationships, and meaning-making.
To illustrate this concept, Scruton uses the example of a battle between two groups. From a scientific perspective, we might analyze the conflict in terms of biological imperatives, resource competition, or evolutionary adaptations. However, from an interpersonal perspective, we would consider the motivations, beliefs, and cultural significance of the battle for the participants.
The Lebenswelt: The World of Life
Scruton introduces the term "Lebenswelt," popularized by philosopher Edmund Husserl, which translates to "the world of life." The Lebenswelt represents the realm of human experience that considers reasons rather than causes, and focuses on relationships between persons instead of the behavior of biological organisms.
This concept is crucial for understanding how we experience art, music, and other cultural phenomena. For example, when viewing a painting like Botticelli's "Birth of Venus," the scientific lens might see only an array of pigments on canvas. In contrast, the Lebenswelt perspective allows us to perceive the emerging subject of the painting – a personified goddess of erotic love – and engage with its deeper meaning and cultural significance.
The Emergence of Consciousness
Scruton argues that the scientific perspective struggles to explain how conscious persons emerge from a series of physical processes. Even if neuroscience could provide a complete explanation of self-consciousness in terms of brain activity, it would still fail to account for concepts like free choice and responsibility, which exist only in the Lebenswelt.
This cognitive dualism doesn't require us to deny the validity of scientific explanations. Instead, it allows for a second way of understanding reality that acknowledges our experience of ourselves as centers of free and responsible thought and action.
The Persistence of Subjectivity
The Illusion of Free Will?
Scruton addresses the ongoing debate about free will in light of neuroscientific research. He discusses experiments that show brain activity preceding conscious decision-making, which some interpret as evidence that our choices are predetermined by neural processes rather than conscious deliberation.
However, Scruton argues that this conclusion is flawed because it fails to account for the subjective experience of decision-making and the ability of individuals to provide reasons for their actions. He contends that there is no specific part of the brain we can point to as the source of our "I" or our sense of agency.
The I-You Intentionality
Scruton introduces the concept of "I-You intentionality" to describe how we relate to other people as subjects rather than objects. This "overreaching intentionality of interpersonal attitudes" refers to our tendency to search for the intangible, unknowable place from which others address us as subjects.
Even if free will were proven to be an illusion, Scruton argues that we would continue to treat others as subjects with agency and accountability. This is because our understanding of ourselves as subjects leads us to extend that same consideration to others.
The Importance of Subjectivity in Human Experience
Scruton emphasizes that our deepest and most meaningful experiences – such as participation in religious rituals, love, and art appreciation – involve seeking to address others through I-You subjectivity. He argues that moral education teaches us to always treat each other as subjects, even in difficult situations.
By ignoring or dismissing the importance of subjectivity in human experience, Scruton warns that we risk doing a great disservice to humanity and losing touch with essential aspects of our nature.
The Value of Transcendent Bonds
The Power of Speech Acts
Scruton explores how humans differ from animals in their ability to use language to create obligations, promises, commitments, and responsibilities. Through speech acts, we can bring new situations into being, such as making a promise or passing a law. These acts create binding obligations that shape our social reality.
Contracts vs. Vows
While contracts and legal obligations are necessary for society to function, Scruton argues that problems arise when we apply a contractual lens to all of our relationships. He emphasizes the importance of preserving bonds that go beyond contracts or negotiations, which he calls "transcendent bonds" or "vows."
These transcendent bonds, such as friendship and love, tie people together in a shared destiny and involve dedicating and making gifts of ourselves. Marriage, in its traditional form, is presented as the ultimate example of a vow – an existential tie that goes beyond mere contractual obligations.
The Erosion of Transcendent Bonds
Scruton expresses concern about the trend towards viewing marriages and other important relationships primarily through a contractual lens. He argues that communities need marriages to be more than just contracts, as societies dominated by purely contractual bonds can become consumed by selfish desires and lack the security and stability needed for healthy child-rearing and community building.
Architecture and the Human Experience
The Essence of Personhood
Drawing on Aristotle's concept of final forms, Scruton argues that it is in our essence as humans to become persons. He suggests that we grow into personhood by constructing and metaphysically engaging with the places in which we live.
The Role of Architecture in Shaping Our Worldview
Scruton explores how our built environments reflect our attitudes toward ourselves and each other. He contrasts traditional architecture, which often incorporated faces and expressions into buildings, with modern architecture that tends to treat buildings as purely functional objects.
Traditional sacred architecture, such as temples and churches, was designed to evoke a sense of divine presence and subjectivity. These buildings created spaces where lives could intersect and where people could experience a sense of the sacred.
The Impact of Modern Architecture
In contrast, Scruton argues that modern architecture often dismisses the sacred and treats buildings as mere utilitarian objects. This shift has a profound impact on how we view ourselves within these spaces. Where traditional buildings with "faces" created ways of addressing the space before them, modern faceless buildings can make us feel like cogs in a machine.
Scruton suggests that this architectural trend reflects and reinforces a broader cultural shift away from recognizing the importance of subjectivity and transcendent experiences in our lives.
The Significance of Art and Music
The Limitations of Scientific Approaches to Art
Scruton criticizes attempts by evolutionary psychologists to explain art, music, and literature as mere adaptations developed to help us pass on our genes. He argues that this reductionist approach is damaging because it teaches people to ignore and devalue the subject matter in the arts – the very things from which we derive meaning.
The Search for Subjectivity in Music
Using classical music as an example, Scruton explores how we search for and derive meaning from the subjective qualities of art. When we listen to a piece of music, we often sense that it is "saying" something – that it has a kind of subjectivity. This subjectivity is what we seek when we engage with music on a deep level.
Scruton argues that we understand the character of a piece of music through our personal experience with it. When we join our own subjectivity with that of the music, the emotions it evokes become part of our inner lives, enriching our emotional relationships and showing us that we aren't alone in our experiences.
The Shift in Musical Culture
Scruton expresses concern about the shift in musical culture from valuing highly intricate compositions to prioritizing predictable, short rhythms and prepackaged harmonies. He argues that modern popular music often doesn't inspire us to respond with the same level of sympathy and emotional engagement as classical music.
This change in musical culture, according to Scruton, means we may be missing out on a vital form of emotional education. He suggests that engaging with more complex and nuanced music can add depth to our emotional lives and help us develop greater empathy and understanding in our relationships with others.
The Role of Religion in Confronting Life and Death
The Limits of Scientific Explanations
Scruton points out that while physics describes the universe in terms of matter and energy transformations, our lived experiences often feel like moments of creation or destruction. The most profound example of this is our confrontation with death – the knowledge that our subjective experience will one day end.
Religion as a Source of Meaning
Scruton argues that while science looks for causes, religion searches for reasons. In this view, religion attempts to answer the universal "Why?" by proposing that God is the endpoint in our search for reasons. This perspective can provide comfort and meaning in moments of crisis, such as when we confront life, death, or suffering.
The Concept of Life as a Gift
Scruton introduces the idea that seeing life as a gift is fundamental to religious thought. He uses the biblical story of Abraham, who is asked to sacrifice his son, as an extreme example of recognizing that being itself is a gift from God. This perspective, Scruton argues, allows people to approach life with gratitude and find meaning even in difficult circumstances.
The Importance of Religious Rituals
Scruton emphasizes the significance of religious rituals in enabling contact with the divine. He describes how these rituals, conducted with meticulous attention to detail, create a sacred space separate from ordinary life. Using the example of the Jewish Sabbath, Scruton illustrates how faith and ritual coincide to enable a shared experience of God's presence and fulfill a deep human need for transcendence.
The Value of Cognitive Dualism
Balancing Scientific and Interpersonal Understanding
Throughout the book, Scruton argues for the importance of maintaining cognitive dualism – the ability to see the world through both scientific and interpersonal lenses. He contends that modern societies tend to prioritize the scientific, biological perspective at the expense of the Lebenswelt, or world of life.
The Dangers of Objectification
Scruton warns that by focusing solely on scientific explanations for human behavior and experience, we risk viewing one another as objects rather than subjects. This objectification can lead to a loss of empathy, moral responsibility, and a diminished sense of the sacred in our lives.
The Ongoing Relevance of Religion
While acknowledging the value of scientific inquiry, Scruton argues that religion continues to play a crucial role in helping us:
- Reorient our attitudes toward meaning
- Gain a moral education
- Confront the most difficult and important crises in our lives
He suggests that religious perspectives offer a necessary counterbalance to purely materialistic worldviews, allowing us to engage with the full depth of human experience.
Conclusion
In "The Soul of the World," Roger Scruton presents a compelling argument for the enduring importance of religious and spiritual perspectives in our increasingly scientifically-oriented world. He challenges readers to consider the limitations of purely materialistic explanations for human experience and to embrace the value of cognitive dualism.
Scruton's exploration of art, music, architecture, and social relationships demonstrates how our yearning for the sacred manifests in various aspects of culture. By recognizing and nurturing this fundamental human need, he argues, we can lead richer, more meaningful lives and build stronger, more empathetic communities.
Ultimately, "The Soul of the World" invites readers to reconsider their relationship with the sacred and to appreciate the complex interplay between scientific understanding and spiritual experience. Scruton's work serves as a reminder that in our quest to understand the world around us, we must not lose sight of the profound mysteries of human consciousness and our innate desire for transcendence.