‘The Soul of the World’: In Defence of the Sacred
A review of ‘The Soul of the World’, by Roger Scruton; Princeton University Press, 2014.
In The Soul of the World, philosopher Roger Scruton explores the unseen forces that bind us to each other, to art, and to a sense of the divine. His aim is to make us see that there are aspects of the human experience that cannot be measured like objects, but are still important — among the most important things in our lives. Purpose, meaning, love, beauty, the sacred — these are deeply significant. And yet there are some who would claim that they do not ‘really’ exist, just because they are beyond words, reliant on subjective accounts. For Wittgenstein, their ineffability was not a problem, and trying to describe them did more harm than good. ‘That whereof we cannot speak,’ he wrote, ‘we must pass over in silence.’ But for Roger Scruton, this won’t do. These ways of understanding may ‘belong to the human perspective alone’. But they need affirming. Facts are not the be-all-and-end-all of our lives. Meanings matter.
Purpose, meaning, love, beauty, the sacred — these are deeply significant.
At the heart of the book is the idea of the ‘sacred’ which, for Scruton, can connect us to a moral and spiritual world that science alone cannot reach. Scruton argues the sacred isn’t the exclusive realm of religion. It is a more about the things we value: a painting, a ritual, a piece of music. Each is a door to a higher experience. Art, he writes, ‘lifts us out of ourselves and presents us to ourselves as objects of reflection and reverence’. It reflects his belief that art is not mere decoration but a way of seeing ourselves and the world around us through different eyes. When we make music, we create a shared experience, creating community without words. This is one way that beauty can bind us to each other and something beyond.
Scruton goes further. Ritual and worship, he writes, are ways of bringing us together. Traditional rituals matter because they give us structure and meaning. Rituals help us face loss, celebrate joy, and make sense of life’s mysteries. Here, he follows Kołakowski, whose Presence of Myth deals with the way myths give us meaning. ‘In ritual, we acknowledge what cannot be explained, and by acknowledging it we make it our own,’ Scruton writes, viewing ritual as putting us in touch with what cannot be said in words. He likens this to communion, where we gather to share in a sacred act, even if we interpret it differently. Such rites and rituals keep alive a sense of the sacred, build communities and hold them together.
Unsurprisingly, the question of God comes up. Scruton does not think God is a man in the sky, as the New Atheists seem to. For him, God is more of an idea of an experience. He explores the concept of a ‘personal God’, something that gives depth to human life, rather than a strict, rule-giving figure. ‘To believe in God,’ Scruton writes, ‘is to believe that life has an ultimate point, one that lies beyond the world of objects and events.’ He does not try to convince us of any particular religious view. Instead, he asks us to consider that life might have a purpose beyond mere survival. Thus God is something like a placeholder for meaning, a way to think about life as something greater than ourselves.
Scruton does not think God is a man in the sky, as the New Atheists seemed to.
Scruton’s style is invariably lucid. Here he writes clearly about philosophy, art, religion, aesthetics, showing not only his breadth of knowledge but how each of these fields of human activity helps us understand ourselves and the world. In support of his case he cites Kant, Hegel, Dostoevsky. But he avoids jargon and pretence. He is aiming, as ever, at the intelligent general reader, not an academic philosopher. And that is quite right, because what he is discussing are those most universal parts of our experience, not something divorced from concrete reality. He is defending the meaning we derive from the things we do; the meaning itself is what matters. I have quoted Midgeley many times in my writing, but one cannot avoid here citing her ‘school of nothing buttery’: those who would dismiss Raphael’s School of Athens as ‘nothing but’ paint on canvas, or scorn love as ‘nothing but’ biochemistry. Religion and philosophy step in where evolutionary psychology and neuroscience end.
Science and faith are not at odds. They simply speak to different parts of our experience. Scruton helps us to see this. The Soul of the World is a thoughtful, careful study that asks us to look beyond the material, and treat the moral and spiritual with respect. He wants us to feel—as many of us to do—that life really does have depth and mystery, that the scientist does not have a monopoly on truth. The sacred, as he calls it, is real, and it is what in the end gives life its meaning. This book challenges us to see beauty, love, and ritual as essential parts of the human experience, not as illusions or distractions. The soul of the world is as real as the world itself.
