Светото во однос на доброто и на убавото: позиционирање на светото во однос на концептот за kalokagathia

Abstract

The belief in the sacred as basis of religion is analysed through the difficulty to define it otherwise than in opposition with the profane, due to its super-rationality, “otherworldliness” and mysterious power, and in connection to the concept of kalokagathia. The methodological problems of the ineffability of the sacred are outlined through the inability to frame the sacred in rational and emotional parameters, other than by analogies and vague approximations to experiences of the profane reality. Hence the possibility to demonstrate the sacred as a performative power which provides the fundament of the collective tribal rules (and later societal order) stipulated within the religious cult, as a moral, normative basis of the custom law in Durkheim’s theory of religion, as well as the possibility to theoretically compare, but not equate, the sentiments of the numinous as something which is “completely other”, mysterious and overwhelming, to the sentiments provoked by the beautiful and especially the sublime, in Otto’s phenomenology of religion.