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Nothing is sacred, some people claim, but Roger Scruton wants to defend the notion of the sacred.
He's also a defender of fox hunting, the relevance of which will soon become apparent.
Roger Scruton, welcome to frosty Bites.
Thank you for inviting me.
The topic we're going to focus on is the sacred.
What is the sacred?
I'd prefer to rephrase the question.
What is it?
To see something as sacred?
Many people have experiences that they want to describe in this way, saying that for me, this aspect of reality, this person, this ritual, this place, this state of mind is sacred.
And they mean by that something very special.
And the question is finding out what they do mean.
Well, the concept of the sacred, usually contrasted with the profane, is essentially a religious concept.
Yes, but of course that doesn't really get us very far because we haven't yet got an account of what makes something religious.
All sorts of people all over the world make the distinction between the sacred and the profane, which has something to do with the distinction between those things which are, as it were, outside the world of ordinary experience, and those things which are just part of it, part of the ongoing flow of natural events, those things that occur either outside or perhaps on the edge of things.