Session: What is the Sacred? What is the sacred? John Cottingham The concept of the sacred plays an important role in Roger Scruton’s strategy for defending a religious outlook against the onslaught of modern secularism. Rather like the idea of spirituality, the notion of the sacred has considerable appeal to those like Scruton who are broadly supportive of religious sensibility, but have reservations about the doctrinal and metaphysical components typically associated with religious faith. This paper will examine the idea of the sacred as it appears in Scruton’s recent work, particularly in the context of our human response to moral and aesthetic value, and will ask whether the idea can coherently be deployed without explicit reference tothe theistic presuppositions with which it has traditionally been associated. Cognitive or Ontological Dualism? Anthony O’Hear In a number of recent writings, including his Gifford and Stanton lectures, Roger Scruton has developed an account of religion, showing in detail how religious attitudes grow out of human activity and give that activity meaning and direction. However, in line with a broadly Kantian approach to the relationships between the world as conceived in modern science and that in which we live (the Lebenswelt), it is not altogether clear whether the human and religious meanings Scruton so subtly extracts and expounds require a different level of reality, as opposed to a different level of description, from that delivered in the laws and explanations of physics. In this paper I will explore what Scruton refers to as a dualism, arguing that it does ‘cognitive’ indeed require both a teleology and an ontological dualism, transcending anything deliverable by physics. The Metaphysical and Doctrinal Implications of Roger Scruton’s Philosophy of Religion Hebblethwaite
Session: What is the Sacred? What is the sacred? John Cottingham The concept of the sacred plays an important role in Roger Scruton’s strategy for defending a religious outlook against the onslaught of modern secularism. Rather like the idea of spirituality, the notion of the sacred has considerable appeal to those like Scruton who are broadly supportive of religious sensibility, but have reservations about the doctrinal and metaphysical components typically associated with religious faith. This paper will examine the idea of the sacred as it appears in Scruton’s recent work, particularly in the context of our human response to moral and aesthetic value, and will ask whether the idea can coherently be deployed without explicit reference tothe theistic presuppositions with which it has traditionally been associated. Cognitive or Ontological Dualism? Anthony O’Hear In a number of recent writings, including his Gifford and Stanton lectures, Roger Scruton has developed an account of religion, showing in detail how religious attitudes grow out of human activity and give that activity meaning and direction. However, in line with a broadly Kantian approach to the relationships between the world as conceived in modern science and that in which we live (the Lebenswelt), it is not altogether clear whether the human and religious meanings Scruton so subtly extracts and expounds require a different level of reality, as opposed to a different level of description, from that delivered in the laws and explanations of physics. In this paper I will explore what Scruton refers to as a ‘cognitive’ dualism, arguing that it does indeed require both a teleology and an ontological dualism, transcending anything deliverable by physics. The Metaphysical and Doctrinal Implications of Roger Scruton’s Philosophy of Religion Hebblethwaite
scruton_conference_program.docx