The Sacred in our current societies according to Debray

[Julie4]

Thus, a modern might believe that we are now vaccinated against rites, exempt from all holy veneration, Nietzsche and the Internet having been there. In his essay, "Youth of the Sacred", Debray invites us to reconsider the landscape.

As long as we know how to dissociate it from the divine, the sacred, this "intractable ghost", is everywhere. What is the sacred? Anything that "legitimizes sacrifice and prohibits sacrilege", writes Debray. Have you heard of the Stalinist mausoleums, the flame of the Unknown Soldier, the Pantheon mound, the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem, the Mount Valerian crypt? Did you know that the neo-Byzantine cellar of the Institut Pasteur houses the body of the great scientist?

No doubt these sanctuaries create an image, but that is still too little. Debray sketches, in a mischievously illustrated book, the prolegomena of the contemporary sacred. Doesn't article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights stipulate that one must respect "the sanctity of life"? Don't the flowers placed on Jim Morrison's grave transform a corner of Père-Lachaise into a vampiric altar? Wagner, in connection with "Parsifal", did he not speak of "sacred representation"?

Debray shows how the secularized sacred enters into our secular cult. An investiture ceremony at the Elysée maintains a diffuse sacredness. In various ways, the right to strike, heritage, the duty of memory have become untouchable rites.

Doesn't the law of time push for the unmistakable sanctification of the victims? Not to mention the ecologists, who worship at Mother Nature . The need for ritual unites, writes the author.

Debray distinguishes between the sacred of order (national funerals) and the sacred of communion (Sartre's funeral). We are happy to form a group around the sacred, parades, processions, processions, commemorations, and respect for secrecy is law - so we cannot enter a Masonic temple without being invited. Secularized, the sacred can touch on a paradox: if we compare the very restrained public of a courtroom with that of tourists in shorts who visit a cathedral, the profane sacred now seems more demanding than the confessional sacred..

Debray says in an interview

"Out of intellectual laziness, we assimilate the sacred to the religious, the mystical, the supernatural. I mean to cleanse the sacred of its esoteric or incantatory trappings. reveal what we prefer to evade, either by volatilizing it into states of consciousness, or by making it old-fashioned into retro folklore.The sacred is an obscure and repressed dimension of our modernity, which we only approach in negative terms, edges, through violations, blasphemies, scandals. This is why I offer a contemporary observation of everyday life. My book is an invitation to lift the lid: the sacred is inscribed in stone and sounds, monuments and songs . "

"We do not want to see what this incoercible feeling reveals to us. We are also embarrassed by the fact that this area involves regulations, prohibitions, sanctions. Take the status of the corpse and the cemetery, which remains a place of sacredness: the Penal Code gets involved. As with organ transplantation. We are not free to do anything with a body. Yet, even if each culture respects its red lines without saying so, our era claims to prohibit forbidden. The first of our taboos is the notion of taboo."

“The sacred is what imposes sacrifice and what prohibits sacrilege. In other words, it is what we sanctify! It does not exist in itself. It is not a timeless absolute and mysterious that overhangs or encompasses us, but a certain relationship, dated and localized, between a community and objects, places or people.As if, to go beyond the ephemeral and escape death, we needed certain things which exceed us, precede us and succeed us. And it is this which, like a main beam, holds together organized groups, societies, communities. The sacred is an antidestiny - from which we cannot escape. pass. Which makes it, paradoxically, our unsurpassable Destiny . "

[Ευδεμονια]

I think honestly I agree with Debray’s thoughts, since nowadays we mostly lost the sense of sacred but the conception of sacred as something inviolable and that imposes a serie of moral behaviours is an essential part of our human societies.
Starting from religious rituals, the sacred altars, the sacred hosts, the sacred temples… it created the fear and the respect of god for millennia. It created a generation and a code of moral behaviours that influenced the lives of billion of people around the world. In this sense, this kind of sacred is strictly bound to the Faith, the more one has faith, the more one perceives the sense of sacred through religion. But in general, I think a church or a temple always invites to respect and silence. I personally am not a believer in god but when I visit churches I don’t go to tabernacle and I observe silence, there’s something transmitted by the place that imposes me a mandatory respect, like also in a cemetery.
The sacred, as Debray said, is also secularised, so there are sacred patriotic monuments, like Stalin mausoleum, unknown soldier monuments, patriotic symbols (here in Italy we have National Monuments like the Vittoriano in Rome). There the sacred is perceived in a more laic view, but there’s a big sense of respect imposed by these places. An historic place, like Coliseum or Parthenon, for my personal view imposes the same sense of respect of a temple, since they represent the magnificence, the glory and the rituals of an ancient past, so it’s mandatory for us to only have respect.


I think plus the sacred can be perceived by each of us when it comes to personal emotions. A patriotic person perceives the sacred when it comes to Fatherland, per example when singing the National Anthem, that’s a moment of respect for Fatherland and there’s moral exigence of coordinate singing and dignity. There’s the sacred for Fatherland wars and its good and bad moments.
There can be, in my opinion, a quotidian sense of sacred, so everyone has its particular “rituals” or morals and everyone of us has particular things that generate with respect (without idolising them).
Sacred is an exigence of human race, since it creates a sense of community, a moral narration of things and a justification for a common sacrifice or renounce of personal freedom.

[Julie4]

Yes, you have understood exactly what Debray meant

[Ευδεμονια]

Thanks! I think honestly the sense of sacred helps plus to form a national spirit and a collective conscience, so it’s important for each nation to preserve it.

[Andres77]

The only acceptable definition of sacred comes from Almighty God.

I don't care what any human with a big vocabulary and too much time on their hands and a self-aggrandizing agenda says about what is sacred.

The roman catholic church also has no authority by which to declare anything sacred. It's all made up rules.

[Andres77]

God detests religion. Jesus detested religion.
James 1:26–27

26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and uto keep oneself unstained from the world.

[Andres77]

No man has any authority to define what is sacred. Without God nothing is sacred.

[Julie4]

Oh Régis Debray is a man who fought alongside Che Guevara and knew Fidel Castro personally, he even ended up being inadmissible to the US, he had an imminent political role because he was a foreign policy advisor. Therefore, Régis Debray is absolutely not an intellectual of salon.

However, I had great difficulty in translating some words and passages, because the words used by Debray are already complicated in my mother tongue, and with my level of English it was practically impossible for me.

However I tried to do the best I could to try to summarize the idea developed in this book. Although I realize that it is a rather resounding failure apparently.

[Andres77]

Sweety, if you knew the kinds of things Castro and Che did... then you would have no appreciation for this guy. The mass murder and torture and unspeakable crimes these men did... if Debray was a contemporary and did not oppose these villainous thugs then he's complicate and certainly anything he has to say about the "sacred" is null and void.
You've brought up many other great men to discuss and share. This guy isn't one of them.

[Julie4]

Its starting postulate is: there is no society without transcendence. Just as a secular state has its moral obligations, atheists have sacred values. For him, this transcendence is necessary for social cohesion. The Soviet Union had Lenin, the United States of America has George Washington and the founding fathers, the Constitution. There were also formerly in France with the mythical heroes of the Republic, like Danton or Leclerc...

According to Régis Debray, a group can only be defined with respect to a transcendent reference (whether territorial, doctrinaire or legendary) towards which people's beliefs turn. He calls this need to define the group by an entity that is external to it incompleteness, and names this entity the "sacredness of the collective", which is the representation of what the group considers to be the "best". It is this belief which ensures reciprocal confidence between the members of the group, and guarantees according to R. Debray the social order.

Debray affirms that we thought we could eliminate religion by the Age of Enlightenment, but that we could not eliminate belief. According to him, the current crisis in France is a crisis of republican symbolism, due to a lack of the sacred. For Régis Debray, the last great man with republican symbolism was François Mitterrand. The United States would thus have been able to escape this crisis of the sacred, through their civic-mindedness and their patriotism. The effigy of the United States dollar is an example: “In God We Trust”. It is this patriotic symbolism that would make the strength of the United States.

Régis Debray affirms that when the sense of the symbolic is exhausted, the religious authorities return. The more the symbolic power is dematerialized (religion), the more the symbolic order is strong and the more the symbolic power is historicized (characters), the more the symbolic order is fragile. A humanity without belief is therefore, according to him, reduced to animality.

[Andres77]

Let's just agree to disagree.
I know a lot of history of Cuba. I work with a guy whose parents were almost murdered by Castro. He has more horror stories of how Che experimented and murdered prisoners. This guy is guilty by association. Therefore nothing he says has value. Mein Kampf? Also shit. Same thing.
And without God there is no sacred.
Atheists might have things they revere but the essence of the sacred is holy and pure and atheists can't declare anything holy or pure because they have no authority with which to do so.
Space dust has no spiritual authority.

[Julie4]

You are missing the point about the meaning of Debray's words.

When he met Fidel Castro he was not yet a dictator after , he returned to France and got away from it.

[Andres77]

Fair enough... I got tunnel vision.
Still don't agree.
☺️☺️☺️

[Julie4]

This is because of my bad translation.

ok let's agree to disagree lol

[Andres77]

I'm sure your translation is perfect. Your English is better than many Americans could hope to achieve.
Because I got sidetracked I basically hijacked this. I apologize. If you want to delete and repost I'll stay out of it.
Is that fair?

[Julie4]

No I don't want to suppress your opinion, you have the right to disagree. And it's cool that you express it. We have the right to have different opinions. I would consider myself a dictator if I deleted your comment lol

[Andres77]

Wait a minute. It's after 2am over there. Is that what the French do? Stay up late and drink wine and philosophize, hoping that everyone else is too tired to debate them?
by the way, I just watched Cockleshell Heroes again.
About Operation Frankton.
The kayak commando mission to mine Nazi shipping based outside of Bordeaux.

[Julie4]

It is 3:25 am to be precise.

Well the French can drink wine and actually debate on different subjects, the big family meals during big parties are quite animated lol. But I think that most of the countries do this, no? But we don't do it until so late lol

Well, I must admit that I don't know much about this subject, although I'm sure it's very interesting

[Andres77]

Um... drinking late in America and debating anything usually doesn't end well.

[Julie4]

Haha after I don't think that it still exists much in France. You know our youth is very Americanized and to use a term of Debray I am a "Gallo-American".

[Andres77]

Americanized Gaul?"

[Julie4]

Yeah exactly

[Andres77]

We've corrupted you, sorry.

[Julie4]

Yeah, it's so sad lol

[Andres77]

well, we could use a lot more like you. Bring the average back up.

[Julie4]

this is really nice compliments and very nice , thanks for that 🙂 nice conversation but I am tired now 😊

[Andres77]

😌😌😌
Sleep well

[msc545]

I understand this but I fail to see the point in posting it here.

[pizzalovershouse]

🤔🤔🤔

[Julie4]

I need to delete this absolutely bad Mytakes. nobody understands it lol

[pizzalovershouse]

Very true hard to understand