Religion, aesthetics and moral ontology

http://jos.sagepub.com/Journal of Sociology

http://jos.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/02/25/1440783314521884The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/1440783314521884

published online 25 February 2014Journal of SociologyDouglas Ezzy

Religion, aesthetics and moral ontology

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

The Australian Sociological Association

can be found at:Journal of SociologyAdditional services and information for

http://jos.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://jos.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

What is This?

- Feb 25, 2014OnlineFirst Version of Record >>

at National University of Kaohsiung on October 28, 2014jos.sagepub.comDownloaded from at National University of Kaohsiung on October 28, 2014jos.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://jos.sagepub.com/

http://jos.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/02/25/1440783314521884

http://www.sagepublications.com

http://www.tasa.org.au/

http://jos.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://jos.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://jos.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/02/25/1440783314521884.full.pdf

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml



Journal of Sociology 1 –14

© The Author(s) 2014Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/1440783314521884

jos.sagepub.com

Religion, aesthetics and moral ontology

Douglas EzzyUniversity of Tasmania, Australia

AbstractThis article argues for a broader sociological conception of religion. Religion includes practices that engage with this world in rich and complex ways alongside experiences of transcendence. Religion encompasses a broad palette of aesthetic and emotional experiences that include, but are not confined to, solemnity and beauty. Religious moral ontologies can be both pluralist and dualist. The aesthetic turn in contemporary religion is described, noting associations with individualism, and pluralistic moral ontologies. The concept of pluralistic moral ontology is developed drawing on Nietzsche’s analysis of aesthetics, Carl Einstein’s examination of the relationship of aesthetics to myth and ritual, and a discussion of tragedy in classical Greece. Empirically, the role of aesthetics is manifest in a number of contemporary ethnographies of religion that emphasise the centrality of practice and performance to religion. The film trilogy The Lord of the Rings provides an example of the link between aesthetic experience of myth and pluralistic moral ontologies.

Keywordsaesthetics, Carl Einstein, Durkheim, moral ontology, Nietzsche, religion, ritual

Religion

Early sociological definitions of ‘religion’ typically privileged belief in a transcendent deity, reflecting the dominance of cognitively oriented Christianity in ‘the West’. This form of religious practice is in decline in ‘the West’ and other forms of religion and spir-ituality are growing in significance. Some of these newer forms of religion are less con-cerned with cognitively articulated meaning, focusing instead on emotionally intense aesthetic experience. This article argues that aesthetically oriented religious ritual prac-tices are meaningful and valued because they provide ways of making sense of the joys, pleasures, pain and suffering of living in this world. Religion can be both about belief

Corresponding author:Douglas Ezzy, University of Tasmania, Private bag 22, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia. Email: [email protected]

521884 JOS0010.1177/1440783314521884Journal of SociologyEzzyresearch-article2014

Article

at National University of Kaohsiung on October 28, 2014jos.sagepub.comDownloaded from


2 Journal of Sociology

and the desire for transcendence as well as about aesthetic experience and the desire to live more intensely in this world.

Aesthetics and emotions are increasingly important in both the rhetoric of religious practitioners, and in the activities that constitute religious practice. Dance, song and emotionally engaging narrative, for example, are replacing logically articulated rational argument as the centre-pieces of religious services and the resources they draw on. In contemporary Christianity in Australia the immersive experience of singing songs of praise is becoming more important while the logically articulated sermon based on bibli-cal quotations is less central (Bouma, 2006). Similarly, in the 1980s Christian bookshops were dominated by books like Josh McDowell’s (1979) Evidence that Demands a Verdict, providing logically reasoned arguments for the factual veracity of the Bible. In contrast, Christian bookshops are now more likely to feature books such as Bear Grylls’ (2012) Mud, Sweat and Tears, which is a biographical narrative of Grylls’ adventures in the wild with occasional references to God and Jesus. In Grylls’ account the aesthetic experience of the thrill of adventure is interpreted as part of the thrill of belief in God. While both aesthetics and rational justifications have always been present, aesthetic experience, rather than rationally articulated evidence, is more likely to be central to contemporary Christian practice and rhetoric.

The aesthetic turn in religious practice reflects broader social processes. As Bouma (2006: 86) notes: ‘A cultural macro-trend from the rational to the experiential and emo-tional as the dominant forms of authority is shaping the ways Australians express their spirituality.’ Bouma identifies the mid-20th century as the high point of rational forms of authority, with a gradual shift in emphasis to experience and emotion since that time. The Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, for example, continued earlier trends that devel-oped out of both the Protestant and Catholic reformation movements to reduce the sig-nificance of sensual and visual elements, placing greater emphasis on the cognitively apprehended spoken word. While the Protestant reformers went further than the Catholics, similar trends were in operation in both forms of Christianity (McGuire, 2008). However, as Bouma (2006) notes, this trend has reversed in recent decades with Christian practice in most traditions placing greater emphasis on both emotional expres-sion and aesthetic experience.

Individualism in religion has developed concurrently with the aesthetic turn. Riis and Woodhead argue that emotion has always been central to religion, coexisting with ration-ally articulated meanings: ‘To join a religion is to experience a new way of feeling about self, others, society, and the world’ (2010: 11). The change they identify is to a more individualistic assessment of the emotional significance of religious symbols: ‘personal feelings become the measure and standard by which sacred objects are judged … rather than [people] subjecting themselves to the influence of religious symbols and conform-ing their emotional lives to the agenda they embody’ (Riis and Woodhead, 2010: 188). This transition to individualism is concurrent with the shift toward more emotional and aesthetic forms of religious expression and the decline in the significance of rationally articulated theological argument.

Individualism, however, does not necessarily entail either selfishness or disconnec-tion from social contexts. According to Charles Taylor (1991) the ethic of authenticity involves each person in the pursuit of what is unique about their identity. This is a moral



Ezzy 3

ideal which resists both social pressures to conform and instrumentalism. For Taylor, discovering one’s true self is an inherently dialogical and social project, because the self is always discovered within relationships. Authenticity can therefore be distinguished from selfish individualism because authenticity seeks significance and meaning for the self in the context of relationships and social horizons of significance.

Many new forms of religion are developing around individualistically justified aes-thetic experiences. These experiences shape people’s emotions, understandings and hab-itus in ways that take on a religious character. For example, some all-night dance parties have evolved into a tradition of practice, variously called ‘raves’, ‘trance’ and ‘doofs’, that are arguably, and selectively, religious. While many participants at raves have purely hedonistic experiences, some experiences are religious. One raver says: ‘The rave is my church. It is a ritual to perform.… After every rave, I walk out having seen my soul and its place in eternity’ (Hutson, 2000: 38). The religion of raves, if it can be called that, is not concerned with correct belief, it prioritises aesthetic experience. Raves focus on the felt experience of communitas in the ecstatic moment of the dance. Further, for those who follow the practice of raving, these aesthetic religious experiences can have a major impact on their self-understandings and the way they live, including a greater concern with ethical ways of relating to others (St John, 2012).

Durkheim (1976) understood the importance of emotions and aesthetic experience to religion, emphasising these dimensions in his later work The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Shilling, 2005; Shilling and Mellor, 2011). Jeffrey Alexander (2010) argues that Durkheim’s incipient understanding of ‘feeling consciousness and aesthetic surface’ can be developed into a theory of ‘iconic consciousness’. Alexander pays par-ticular attention to the meaningfulness of this form of aesthetic experience that is not primarily concerned with cognition: ‘To be iconically conscious is to understand without knowing, or at least without knowing that one knows. It is to understand by feeling, by contact, by the “evidence of the senses” rather than the mind’ (2010: 11). Extending Alexander’s point back to religious experience, I argue that aesthetic, tactile, emotional experiences are central to what makes contemporary religion meaningful and attractive. Aesthetically oriented ritual changes the way participants feel, such that their participa-tion in this life is felt to be more meaningful.

Sociological conceptions of religion, influenced by the Parsonian interpretation of Durkheim, understood participation in religious ritual to generate commitment to a shared moral order (Shilling, 2005). In this conception moral commitments were primar-ily cognitive, and the emotional experiences of shared religious ritual took on a second-ary significance, generating commitment to this cognitively articulated collective morality. In contrast, developing recent interpretations of Durkheim’s later work (Alexander, 2010; Shilling, 2005; Shilling and Mellor, 2011), I argue that religious ritual shapes moral practices because the aesthetic and emotional experiences of ritual shape how people feel about themselves and those they relate to, and it is these feelings that shape moral practice. Aesthetic and emotional experiences are not secondary, but rather are integral to how humans know and understand themselves.

The moral ontologies of religious practices that prioritise aesthetic experience are often foundationally different to religions that prioritise belief, although this is not always the case. A pluralistic moral ontology (Connolly, 2005; Kearney, 2003) understands the




world as shaped by competing interests and moral projects which are often contradictory. Suffering, failure and evil are inevitable products of pursuing a good moral project. This form of moral ontology is, for example, at the heart of classical Greek understandings of tragedy (Nussbaum, 1986). In contrast, dualistic moral ontologies create a radical sepa-ration between good and evil, identifying suffering and failure as solely products of evil. Pursuing ‘the good’ should result in only good things happening. The modernist Enlightenment tradition, in both its religious and secular versions, reflects this form of dualistic moral ontology, in which correct belief and autonomous rational thought are the way to achieve human flourishing (Taylor, 2007).

Religious practices that prioritise aesthetic experiences and pluralistic moral ontolo-gies are valued because they enable participants to live well in this world. Aesthetic experiences enable religious practitioners to make sense of, and act in response to, the contradictions and suffering as well as the joys and pleasures that are inherent in human lives. There are secular ways of achieving similar goals, such as art and psychoanalysis (Ruti, 2006). Further, not all religious practices prioritise aesthetics, and some religious practices are oppressive. Nonetheless, the central argument of this article is that defini-tions of religion that privilege other-worldly transcendence, belief and cognition fail to grasp the significance of aesthetically oriented religious ritual.

There are other trends in religious practice in Australia and globally, most notably the changes driven by migration. For example, migration in recent decades has resulted in significant growth of numbers of Buddhists and Muslims in Australia (Bouma, 2006; Possamai, 2008), Mexican Catholicism in America (McGuire, 2008) and Muslims in the United Kingdom (Cheesman and Khanum, 2009). The changes to religious practice resulting from these demographic shifts are complex, with ethnicity, inequality and vari-ous other factors shaping the process.

The next section reviews John Carroll’s (2012) recent article on religion and beauty. This is contrasted with a Nietzschean appreciation of the full palette of aesthetic experi-ences. Drawing on the art critic Carl Einstein, I extend this point to consider the relation-ship of aesthetics to myth and ritual. Meredith McGuire’s (2008) study, Lived Religion, serves as an example of the importance of the aesthetics of religious ritual and perfor-mance to religion. Finally, fan responses to The Lord of the Rings provide an example of how popular and somewhat secularised myth creates aesthetic experiences that are meaningful because they engage a pluralistic moral ontology.

Carroll on religion

In a recent article in this journal John Carroll (2012) examines whether aesthetics, or more correctly the artistic appreciation of beauty, is replacing the function of religion. He also assesses whether other forms of secular experience might be equivalents of religious experience. Carroll argues that religion has not been disenchanted out of existence, but can be discerned in solemn religious feelings of transcendence that he understands in contradistinction to aesthetic appreciations of beauty. Carroll’s definitions of religion and aesthetics are myopically narrow.

Carroll (2012: 221) defines religion, following William James, as an individual expe-rience. Religion involves a ‘primal reality to be approached solemnly and with dignity, and linked with some feeling of transcendence beyond the normal human plane’ (Carroll,



Ezzy 5

2012: 221). This definition excludes much of contemporary religious practice. In con-trast, I argue that religion is often oriented to this world and encompasses a range of emotions and aesthetic experiences, including solemnity, beauty, pleasure, joy and suf-fering, and that religion is primarily a collective experience.

In sociological definitions ‘spirituality’ is typically defined individualistically, and ‘religion’ is understood as a collective social phenomenon. Riis and Woodhead (2010: 60, 62) note that William James’s definition is psychologically reductionist, focusing on private emotion. Instead they develop a sociological approach based on Durkheim’s analysis of the relationship between religious emotion and collective experience. As Bouma, (2006: 15) notes: ‘While spirituality may be pursued and experienced indi-vidually, religion … is essential social – foundationally the activity of a group.’ Defining religion individualistically elides the this-worldly social significance of religion.

The concept of ‘transcendence’ also requires qualification to avoid the metaphysical implications that this term often references. Many religions, for example, do not have a conception of a transcendent ‘primal reality’. As Vásquez (2011: 10) puts it: ‘“transcend-ence” does not have to rely on theological categories like the sacred, the holy, or the supernatural’. ‘Transcendence’ has Kantian echoes of a ‘supra-historical’ universalism that a variety of religions do not share (Vásquez, 2011:61). For example, many contem-porary Paganisms and Indigenous religions understand this world as the primal reality, and they have no desire to transcend it (Harvey, 2005).

Carroll (2012) begins his analysis of the relationship between religion and aesthetics pointing to Nietzsche’s (2008) argument that meaning can only be found aesthetically. Carroll then draws our attention to how aesthetic meaning is found in an experience of the ‘beautiful’. Carroll here performs an intellectual sleight of hand, because Nietzsche does not equate aesthetics with beauty. For Carroll, and I agree on this point, experiences of beauty are an impoverished and inadequate point of reference to make sense of some of the more profound aspects of contemporary life.

Aesthetics is more than beauty. For Nietzsche aesthetic experiences are sensuous experiences that include solemnity and suffering (Rampley, 2000). Dillon notes that the primary meaning of the term ‘aesthetics’ focuses on sensuous experience, with an empha-sis on beauty developing later: ‘while contemporary usage tends to emphasize the crite-ria of taste and an intellectual concern with beauty, we might note that from its inception, aesthetics has been focused on bodily sensation’ (2004: 499). Kant used the term in this sense, defining it as: ‘the science which treats of the conditions of sensuous perception’ (Kant, quoted in Dillon, 2004: 499). Kant argued that this definition was closer to the Greek term aisthesis that literally translates as ‘sense experience’ (Dufrenne, 1989: xvi).

Carroll (2012: 211) notes the importance of other dimensions of sensuous experience in his discussion of Kant’s and Edmund Burke’s conception of the sublime and Kierkegaard’s reflections on fear and trembling. Carroll interprets these sense experi-ences as a movement away from aesthetics into the domain of the religious, which he defines in contradistinction to aesthetics. While Kierkegaard argued that ‘the religious has nothing to do with pleasure’ (Carroll, 2012: 209), such a definition is problematic sociologically because it excludes many practices that are widely considered religious. Aesthetics incorporates much more than beauty, and religion incorporates much more than solemnity.




The aesthetic experiences of beauty, pleasure, suffering, trauma, and the tensions between these, are integral to religious experience. Following Durkheim (1976), and subsequent interpreters such as Riis and Woodhead (2010), Alexander (2010) and Shilling (20005), I argue that the sensuous, embodied, performed and relational aspects of religious experience are central. Religion understood in these terms is social, rather than individualistic, tied to this-worldly relationships and not restricted to, although inclusive of, a metaphysics of other-worldly transcendence. While it may be solemn and dignified, the full palette of emotions, and particularly emotional peak experiences, are included within religious experiences.

Lived religion

McGuire’s (2008) study, Lived Religion, is an outstanding example of recent accounts of religion that emphasise the this-wordily, embodied, practised and aesthetic dimensions (Asad, 1993; McGuire, 2008; Harvey, 2005; Orsi, 2005; Pike, 2001; Riis and Woodhead, 2010). McGuire begins by highlighting the actual practices of religious people, that are often complex amalgams of practices and ideas that change and transform throughout life: ‘The focus throughout this book is on how religion and spirituality are practiced, experienced, and expressed by ordinary people (rather than official spokespersons) in the context of their everyday lives’ (2008: 12).

McGuire (2008) argues that one of the key longer-term impacts of the Reformation was a redefinition of the sacred away from bodily experiences that does not reflect what religious people, including the adherents of popular Protestantism, are actually doing. This theological move disenchanted ‘supposedly baser bodily needs and appetites – such as for food, sex, procreation, health’ (McGuire, 2008: 39), focusing instead on cogni-tively articulated theologies. Weber, according to McGuire, uncritically accepts the theo-logically defined circumscription of the sacred. Weber’s (1930) account of the Protestant ethic depends heavily on his reading of the ethical writings of Benjamin Franklin rather than detailed examination of the practices of popular Protestantism: ‘Historian Robert Scribner, concludes: “I do not think that the thesis about the ‘disenchantment of the world’ will any longer pass muster as a historically accurate description”’ (McGuire, 2008: 38). I suggest that Weber does describe a transition in Protestant theology, but glosses over the ongoing significance of lived religion for the majority of people.

Sociological conceptions of religion that emphasise belief, knowledge and solemn duty, need to be questioned because they reflect a transition in theology as much as a transition in empirical religious practice. The disenchantment thesis is problematic because it reflects a sociological adoption of the theology of ascetic Protestantism in which: ‘Human material concerns and pleasures, human bodies and extreme emotions came to be defined as not proper to religion or religiosity’ (McGuire, 2008: 41). These aesthetic, sensuous, aspects of lived religion were devalued in the arcane ideas of Protestant theologians, but remained important in the experiences of many religious practitioners. The idea that religion should be restricted to ‘transcendence’ of this-worldly experience reflects the incursion of Protestant theology into sociology.

The consequences of the focus on transcendence and authoritative versions of correct theology are also gendered. McGuire provides a detailed account of the religious prac-tices of Mexican American popular religion. Many of these practices occur in the home



Ezzy 7

and relate to extended family and the community, but also include specifically women’s concerns associated with reproduction, ‘fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, and maternity’ (McGuire, 2008: 57). She goes on to argue that:

when official religions redefined the practice of religion to exclude or devalue involvement of people’s bodies and emotions, treating them as distracting or even polluting, then women – considered more contaminated by and trapped in their bodies than men – lost recognition for their religious practices. (McGuire, 2008: 57)

The developing appreciation of the aesthetic and lived dimensions of contemporary religious practice can be partly understood as sociology moving out from under the influ-ence of conservative Protestant theological assumptions about what constitutes ‘genuine’ or ‘true’ religion. It also reflects a change in actual religious practice, because aesthetic experiences have become more significant to religious practice in the last few decades. Further, as Meyer (2010: 750) notes, Weber’s view of the role of aesthetics and art in religion ‘locks aesthetics into the sphere of irrational feelings that are mobilized for ques-tionable ends’. The influence of Protestant theology on sociological theory both sidelines and pathologises aesthetic experience.

The influence of Protestant Christian theology on sociological theory directed atten-tion away from the lived and aesthetic aspects of religion. Further, I suggest that the influence of monotheistic theologies on sociological theory has also led to the misinter-pretation, devaluation and elision of the pluralistic moral ontologies that are often associ-ated with aesthetically oriented religious traditions such as Hinduism, Indigenous religions and contemporary Paganisms (Harvey, 2005, 2013). Nietzsche provides an excellent explanation of the significance of aesthetics in this context.

Nietzsche

For Nietzsche the contradictory forces of nature require aesthetics to make sense of them. Beauty does not replace God. Rather, an aesthetic appreciation of contradiction and tension replaces the desire for a unified metaphysical apprehension of the divine. The form of aesthetics advocated by Nietzsche is clearly articulated in the writings of classical Greek tragedy: ‘tragic culture aims at an indeterminate aesthetic expression of its understanding of the world, since such an understanding can only be an aesthetic one’ (Rampley, 2000: 115). Nietzsche describes aesthetic understanding of the world as ‘wis-dom’ in contrast to Socratic attempts to ‘actually “know” the world in intelligible con-cepts’ (Rampley, 2000: 115). The key difference between aesthetic wisdom and cognitive knowledge is that aesthetics embraces indeterminacy and tension.

The problem, for Nietzsche, is not that reality is meaningless, arbitrary and chaotic, but that rational scientific laws cannot adequately engage with the complexity and indetermi-nacy of reality. The deception of modernist science is the claim that it can uncover the structures and meaning of reality. Hence Nietzsche’s rejection of rationalist science is not a simple substitution of truth for power. Rather, it is a substitution of aesthetics for reason, and a rejection of science as an adequate and sufficient way of relating to the world.

Nietzsche can be interpreted as arguing that nature is aesthetically structured (Pan, 2001; Rampley, 2000). Aesthetic and sensuous forms of representing the world are not




arbitrary impositions on a formless world, rather they represent the aesthetic structure of reality because they represent the unpredictable, contradictory and tension-ridden struc-tures of reality:

Nietzsche attempts to overturn science and reason by demonstrating how their age-old enemies, myth and tradition, can function as an alternative means of relating to nature that avoids representation but at the same time is not pure and arbitrary creation. (Pan, 2001: 39)

Art and myth are mimetic representations of the contradictions and tensions at the heart of reality. Nietzsche ‘affirms myth and tradition over critique and reason as the best means for organizing social life so as to take nature’s power into account’ (Pan, 2001: 67). Or, as Rampley (2000) puts it: ‘Using tragedy in particular as an aesthetic model, Nietzsche sees art and the tragic sublime as the means to the loss of metaphysical cer-tainty without falling into the abyss of reactive nihilism’ (Rampley, 2000: 11–12).

Rampley’s (2000) and Pan’s (2001) interpretations of Nietzsche are quite different from Carroll’s account. Summarising Nietzsche’s argument in The Birth of Tragedy (2008), Carroll says:

At the base level, the life of the individual is swept along like a rudderless boat on a stormy sea of passions, drives, ambitions, anxieties and insecurities. This reality is arbitrary and chaotic, without sense – not much different to animal existence, hence the reference to the satyr. Meaning is superimposed in the form of images, symbols and, above all, stories – at the highest level, ones provided by poets and artists. (Carroll, 2012: 208)

Carroll emphasises the Schopenhauerian influence in Nietzsche’s thought that under-stands primal reality as chaotic, meaningless and arbitrary. The Schopenhauerian influ-ence is strongest in Nietzsche’s early work, such as The Birth of Tragedy, and it is this work that Carroll references. In contrast, Rampley (2000) argues that in Nietzsche’s later work, but also incipiently in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche begins to distance himself from this conception.

These divergent interpretations of Nietzsche’s thought are illustrated in the differing understandings of the image of the satyr. Carroll (2012: 208) interprets the satyr as sig-nalling a reality that is ‘arbitrary and chaotic, without sense’. However, Pan (2001) argues that Nietzsche locates the satyr chorus in opposition both to the ‘person of culture’ and also in opposition to senseless barbarism. The importance of the satyr chorus signi-fies the refusal to privilege cognitively articulated laws, embracing instead aesthetic and mythological relationships with nature. Aesthetic forms, as represented by the satyr cho-rus, are a ‘correlative or supplement to science’ that stand in contradistinction to both barbarism and science (Pan, 2001: 71). ‘As a mixture of human and animal, the satyr is the image of a human in communion with nature as the thing-in-itself’ (Pan, 2001: 75). In other words, the satyr is an aesthetic representation of the meaningfulness of nature.

The artistic appreciation of beauty is inadequate as a way of engaging and making sense of the world. This is because beauty is only a portion of aesthetic and religious experience. The world is also full of tension and suffering, as well as beauty and pleas-ure. Aesthetic experiences, including religious aesthetic experiences, include all these aspects of life. I turn now to the work of Carl Einstein, who examined in more detail the role of religious myth and ritual in shaping aesthetically mediated relationships.



Ezzy 9

Carl Einstein and Greek tragedy

Carl Einstein (1885–1940) was an art historian of Jewish heritage living in Nazi Germany. His writings include extensive discussions of myth and religious ritual (Pan, 2001). Rather than seeking a rationalist solution to the alienation of contemporary life, Einstein argues for the importance of myth and ritual to organise and make sense of human expe-rience. Einstein is here developing a tradition from 19th-century romantic expressivism that moral significance derives from aesthetic experiences and artistically mediated epiphany (Taylor, 2007: 425). Einstein’s ideas echo Nietzsche’s but go beyond him because Einstein identifies the centrality of aesthetically mediated relationships to reli-gious myth and ritual (Ezzy, 2014).

Myth plays a key role in providing narratives and images that structure collective experience. For Einstein ‘myth is grounded in an aesthetic intuition of reality’ (Pan, 2001: 24). Myth, like art, represents the tensions and contradictions inherent in both human desires and nature. Myth and art provide an aesthetic representation of the whole that in turn shapes how people see and experience the world. ‘Mythic reality is not a backward or pathological fantasy world but the foundation of human perception, func-tioning to determine the structures through which humans experience the world’ (Pan, 2001: 134). Primitivist aesthetics prioritise mythic experience at the local level, rejecting totalising or progressivist narratives.

Einstein championed the primitivist movement in art that reclaimed the mythic struc-tures underpinning a healthy society. Einstein uses the term ‘primitive’ to refer to a par-ticular form of aesthetic relationship between humans and ‘nature’ that is found in all cultures. He explicitly rejects any suggestion of inferiority or backwardness associated with the word ‘primitive’: ‘To the extent that this mediation [between humans and nature] is a foundational experience for every culture, the word primitive designates a particular dimension of all cultures rather than indicating specific cultures perceived to be premod-ern or antimodern’ (Pan, 2001: 122). Einstein does not romanticise the primitive condi-tion: ‘there is no possible return to a harmonious state but only to a primitive state of conflict in humankind’s relation to nature’ (Pan, 2001: 12).

Drawing Carl Einstein and Nietzsche’s insights together I argue that religious myth and ritual are important because they facilitate an understanding of ‘reality’ that takes in both its aesthetically structured qualities and its fundamentally contradictory and ten-sion-ridden nature. This way of understanding is clearly represented in classical Greek tragedy. The ‘tragedy’ of the classical Greek dramas is not the product of a fatal flaw or some other contingency. Rather, the inconsistency of ethical requirements is a founda-tional aspect of the nature of reality. Put simply, ‘the good’ is not unitary. ‘Tragedy’ lies in the inherent conflict between two ‘good’ ethical demands (Nussbaum, 1986). For the classical Greeks, tragedy lies in the fact that choosing one ‘good’ course of action will inevitably result in harm and suffering elsewhere. The dramas of classical Greek trage-dies do not attempt to resolve this problem, but rather represent ‘the richness and depth of the problem itself’ (Nussbaum, 1986: 49).

The aesthetic approach to reality articulated by Nietzsche, Carl Einstein and classical Greek tragedy is a foundationally different understanding of what it is to be human com-pared to the approach developed in Kantian, Platonist and Enlightenment thought (Nussbaum, 1986). In aesthetically mediated pluralist moral ontologies the agent is both




active and passive, living with limited control over an independent external world. The soul is ‘soft’ and ‘porous’, trusting in that which is recognised to be ‘mutable and unsta-ble’. The good life is social, involving ‘friends, loved ones, and community’ (Nussbaum, 1986: 20). In contrast, dualist moral ontologies in the Platonist tradition emphasise a purely active agent who aims to eliminate risk and external influences. The soul is ‘hard, impenetrable’, relying on that which is immutable and ‘altogether stable’ (Nussbaum, 1986: 20). The good life is ‘solitary’ and heroic.

Platonist definitions of religion in individualistic, heroic and active terms portray the tragic worldview as one to be resisted, because it is dangerous and unstable (Nussbaum, 1986). Some religious practices, many 20th-century forms of Protestantism for example, draw heavily on Platonist and Enlightenment assumptions and understandings. Their self-definition is formed out of resistance and rejection, one is almost tempted to say repres-sion, of aesthetic forms of experience and self-understanding such as those represented in classical Pagan Greek tragedy. In contrast, the deliberate engagement of aesthetics in reli-gious practice is associated with pluralistic moral ontologies that are more accepting of limitations on human agency, trusting despite the mutability of the world, and social and communitarian in focus. An aesthetic approach to religious ritual and myth embraces diversity, plurality and ambiguity. Resisting the twin horns of the false dilemma of relativ-istic nihilism and transcendent certainty, aesthetics embraces the hermeneutic complexity of this-worldly religious practice (de Certeau, 1992; Ricoeur, 1985).

Lord of the Rings

Popular culture has always played a role in shaping religious practice (Moore, 1994). In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the magical realism of science fiction fantasy is a feature of contemporary popular culture and shapes how people understand and develop their religious preferences (Berger and Ezzy, 2007; Clark, 2003). I focus on The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy as an exemplar of the complex aesthetic palette of contemporary popular culture. In particular, I highlight the pluralistic moral ontology that fans are drawn into. There is a substantial literature on both Tolkien’s original novels and on their film interpretation. This discussion focuses on two surveys that examine religious responses to the books and films.

Kloet and associates (2007) report the results of a large qualitative survey of The Lord of the Rings fans. Of the 3275 Dutch fans who completed the survey, 416, or 12.7% described watching the film as a ‘spiritual journey’ (de Kloet and Kuipers, 2007: 307). The nature of this spiritual journey is clearly aesthetic:

When asked to summarize their reaction to the film, they would often describe it as ‘very emotional’, ‘impressive’, ‘overwhelming’, ‘breathtaking’ and ‘magical’. Many of the responses referred to the strong affective effects of the film: crying, goose bumps, sadness and a sense of loss when the film was over. Clearly, these spiritual viewers feel a very strong involvement and commitment with the film (as well as with the books, which they mentioned often in their responses). (Kloet et al., 2007: 309)

Jerslev (2006: 206), drawing on a similar study of fans, also describes the responses to the film: ‘the most recurrent adjectives for emotions are … spellbinding, impressive,



Ezzy 11

magnificent, fabulous/extremely (as both adjective and adverb), beautiful, touching, overwhelming, spectacular, exciting, incredible/unbelievable’. She notes that the word ‘entertaining’ is rarely used: ‘there is a recurrent use of a kind of solemn and respectful language in expressing the emotional experience and often attached to the film as an artefact’ (Jerslev, 2006: 213).

These aesthetic responses to The Lord of the Rings do not constitute a religion because they are not linked to ritual practices. While there are some groups that have drawn on movies, such as The Matrix (Possamai, 2005), to create religious practices, the develop-ment of movie-related ritual is rare. Rather, The Lord of the Rings is a cultural resource, drawn on to inform the eclectic religious practices that make up lived religion (Berger and Ezzy, 2007; Clark, 2003). For example, one respondent describes the link he sees between his own spirituality and that of The Lord of the Rings:

I am working on Zen-Buddhism, but that’s not really a religion, it is about searching for what is truly important in your life … it is a sort of inner quest for who you are, I really associate that with the movie. Simply finding yourself in a bigger whole, the goal of your life. This is not a simple goal, like making lots of money or owning big house, but a higher goal, and that also comes back in the movie. (de Kloet and Kuipers, 2007: 316)

Jerslev (2006: 214) identifies a form of ‘neoreligiosity’ in viewer responses to The Lord of the Rings. She argues that emotional responses to The Lord of the Rings can best be described drawing on the ‘aesthetic term the sublime’. Referencing Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant she notes that the sublime is ‘an ambiguous feeling of pleasure and pain’ (Jerslev, 2006: 216). Beauty is not the same as the sublime: ‘The sublime is an aesthetic experience, a state of mind arrived at by the experience of the immeasurability of natural phenomena’ (Jerslev, 2006: 216).

While there are many moments of beauty and grandeur in the film, there are also moments of great suffering and sorrow, such as the moment Gandalf falls from the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. It is these moments, alongside the moments of joy and beauty, that make the film sublime. As King Théoden lies dying after the battle of Pelennor Fields he says: ‘I go to my fathers … in whose mighty company … I shall not now feel ashamed’ (Lord of the Rings, 2003). This is a powerful emotional moment of significant moral complexity. In some ways it is beautiful, but the word does not describe the com-plexity of the aesthetic experience, the agony, depth and passion that it touches. In many ways it echoes the contradictory tensions inherent in tragedy described by Nietzsche and Nussbaum. The suffering and death of battle are inherent in Théoden living a good life, they are not something to be overcome or that the world would be better without.

To focus on the solemnity of the responses to The Lord of Rings, mentioned by Jerslev (2006) as an indication of religious-like transcendence, as Carroll (2012) would suggest, is to highlight only one possible reading of the significance of the films. The films also draw fans into a this-worldly pluralistic moral ontology that allows them to make sense of the inherent tensions and contradictions of life. This is one of the reasons that Tolkien, along with a wide range of other science fiction fantasy authors, is often read or watched by people who then go on to seek out religions such as contemporary Paganisms that explicitly engage aesthetically rich ritual practice in the context of pluralistic moral ontologies (Berger and Ezzy, 2007).




In many ways contemporary fiction and fantasy performs a similar social function to classical and indigenous mythology. The stories draw readers and viewers into aestheti-cally rich understandings of the problems of living in the world. Mythology enables ‘us to live more intensely’ within the world, as Karen Armstrong (2005: 3) so beautifully puts it. This is particularly the case when mythology portrayed in popular culture is asso-ciated with religious ritual practice, as is the case among contemporary Pagans and Witches (Berger and Ezzy, 2007) and some contemporary Christians (Clark, 2003).

Conclusion

For a time, in ‘the West’, religion was focused on attending meetings in buildings and proclaiming belief. This form of religion is in decline. Many sociologists of religion were seduced by the theologians of this cognitively oriented form of religious practice. As a consequence sociologists tended to ignore and devalue everyday aesthetic and embodied religious practices. The Jew who lights the Shabbat candles at home (Harvey, 2013), the Mexican American women who engage in folk healing practices (McGuire, 2008) and the Pagan teenager who performs a self-love spell (Berger and Ezzy, 2007) are all engag-ing in religion. These forms of religion are primarily ‘lived’, focused on practices ori-ented to this world, and aesthetically meaningful, with belief and cognition of secondary significance.

Religious aesthetics draw ritual participants into ways of relating to this world that make sense of the complex, contradictory and inherently problematic experiences of life. Some, although not all, religious aesthetic practices reject the Enlightenment Platonist moral ontology that assumes the world is coherently organised and that ‘the good’ is unitary. Sociological accounts of religious practice need to include such aesthetically mediated pluralistic moral ontologies as legitimate parts of the religious landscape, rather than excluding them by definition. Definitions of religion as private, heroic, mas-culinised and rational have marginalised the religious practices of women and non-‘western’ people (McGuire, 2008). Defining religion in contradistinction to aesthetics and beauty continues this politics of privilege and marginalisation.

In recent decades in Australia, and more broadly in the ‘West’, religious practice has been driven by three trends. Emotionally engaging and aesthetically rich ritual performances have become more important and more common, while logically defended belief has been declining in significance. Individually chosen and evaluated forms of religious practice, emotional engagement and belief are taking precedence over institutionally given and prescribed practices, emotions and understandings. Finally, pluralistic moral ontologies that embrace life in the inherently contradictory and tension-ridden nature of this world are developing alongside dualistic moral ontol-ogies that seek transcendence of the evils of world, escaping to a logically and morally coherent other world. There is a fourth trend, driven by immigration, which cuts across the other three trends. Belief, institutional prescription and dualistic morality are often associated, as are aesthetic experience, individualism, and pluralistic morality. However, this is not always the case, and many cross-category examples of religious practice can easily be identified, such as sensational forms in Pentecostalism whose role has been analysed by Meyer (2010).



Ezzy 13

Nietzsche (2008) argued that aesthetics are central to making sense of life. Only aes-thetic modes of representation are able to grasp the ambivalence, antimonies and inher-ent tensions at the heart of life in this world. Religious ritual and myth are an aesthetic form of experience (Pan, 2001). Their aesthetic character makes it possible to represent the ambivalences and inherent conflict that constitutes reality, although it is equally pos-sible for religious ritual and myth to be imperialistic and destructive. Being religious does not make people ethical. However, religious myth and ritual do, sometimes, engage with aesthetic resources that draw participants into new forms of relationship with the world. It is in these aesthetically mediated contexts that religion shapes how people live in this world.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

References

Alexander, J. (2010) ‘Iconic Consciousness: The Material Feeling of Meaning’, Thesis Eleven 103(1): 10–25.

Armstrong, K. (2005) A Short History of Myth. Edinburgh: Canongate.Asad, T. (1993) Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and

Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Berger, H. and D. Ezzy (2007) Teenage Witches. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Bouma, G. (2006) Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the Twenty-first Century.

Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.Carroll, J. (2012) ‘Beauty contra God: Has Aesthetics Replaced Religion in Modernity?’, Journal

of Sociology 48(2): 206–23.Cheesman, D. and N. Khanum (2009) ‘“Soft” Segregation: Muslim Identity, British Secularism

and Inequality’, pp. 41–62 in A. Dinham, R. Furbey and V. Lowndes (eds) Faith in the Public Realm. Bristol: The Policy Press.

Clark, L. (2003) From Angels to Aliens. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Connolly, W.E. (2005) Pluralism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.de Certeau, M. (1992) The Mystic Fable, trans. M. Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.de Kloet, J. and G. Kuipers (2007) ‘Spirituality and Fan Culture around the Lord of the Rings

Film’, Fabula 48(3/4): 300–319.Dillon, E. (2004) ‘Sentimental Aesthetics’, American Literature 76(3): 495–523.Dufrenne, M. (1989) The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience. Evanston, IL: Northwestern

University Press.Durkheim, E. (1976) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: Allen and Unwin:

London (first published in Paris: F. Alcan, 1912).Ezzy, D. (2014) Sex, Death and Witchcraft: A Contemporary Pagan Festival. London: Bloomsbury

Academic.Grylls, B. (2012) Mud, Sweat and Tears. New York: Corgi.Harvey, G. (2005) Animism: Respecting the Living World. New York: Columbia University Press.Harvey, G. (2013) Food, Sex and Strangers: Redefining Religion. London: Equinox.Hutson, S.R. (2000) ‘The Rave: Spiritual Healing in Modern Western Subcultures’, Anthropological

Quarterly 3(1): 35–49.




Jerslev, A. (2006) ‘Sacred Viewing: Emotional Responses to Lord of the Rings’, pp. 206–24 in E. Mathijs (ed.) The Lord of The Rings. London: Wallflower Press.

Kearney, R. (2003) Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. London: Routledge.Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) Directed by Peter Jackson. New Line Cinema.

URL (consulted 6 February 2013): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_Return_of_the_King_%28film%29

McDowell, J. (1979) Evidence that Demands a Verdict, revised edn. San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Publishers.

McGuire, M. (2008) Lived Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Meyer, B. (2010) ‘Aesthetics of Persuasion: Global Christianity and Pentecostalism’s Sensational

Forms’, South Atlantic Quarterly 109(4): 741–63.Moore, R. (1994) Selling God. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Nietzsche, F. (2008) The Birth of Tragedy, trans. D. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Nussbaum, M. (1986) The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Orsi, R. (2005) Between Heaven and Earth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Pan, D. (2001) Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism. Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press.Pike, S. (2001) Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for

Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.Possamai, A. (2005) Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-real Testament. Brussels: Peter Lang.Possamai, A. (2008) ‘Australia’s “Shy” De-secularisation Process’, pp. 23–35 in B. Spalek and I.

Alia (eds) Religion, Spirituality and the Social Sciences. Bristol: The Policy Press.Rampley, M. (2000) Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.Ricoeur, P. (1985) Time and Narrative, vol. 2, trans. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.Riis, O. and L. Woodhead (2010) A Sociology of Religious Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.Ruti, M. (2006) Reinventing the Soul. New York: Other Press.Shilling, C. (2005) ‘Embodiment, Emotions, and the Foundations of Social Order: Durkheim’s

Enduring Contribution’, pp. 211–38 in J. Alexander and P. Smith (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shilling, C. and P. Mellor (2011) ‘Retheorising Emile Durkheim on Society and Religion: Embodiment, Intoxication and Collective Life’, The Sociological Review 59(1): 17–42.

St John, G. (2012) Global Tribe. London: Equinox.Taylor, C. (1991) The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Taylor, C. (2007) A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Vásquez, M. (2011) More than Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Weber, M. (1930) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons. London:

Unwin Hyman.

Author biography

Douglas Ezzy is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Tasmania. His research is driven by a fascination with how people make meaningful and dignified lives. His books include Sex, Death and Witchcraft (2014), Qualitative Analysis (2002), and Teenage Witches (2007) with Helen Berger.



Documents

Religion, aesthetics and moral ontology