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The Soul of the World
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
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The Soul of the World
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Summary
In The Soul of the World, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends the experience of the sacred against today’s fashionable forms of atheism. He argues that our personal relationships, moral intuitions, and aesthetic judgments hint at a transcendent dimension that cannot be understood through the lens of science alone. To be fully alive - and to understand what we are - is to acknowledge the reality of sacred things. Rather than an argument for the existence of God, or a defense of the truth of religion, the book is an extended reflection on why a sense of the sacred is essential to human life - and what the final loss of the sacred would mean. In short, the book addresses the most important question of modernity: What is left of our aspirations after science has delivered its verdict about what we are?
Drawing on art, architecture, music, and literature, Scruton suggests that the highest forms of human experience and expression tell the story of our religious need, and of our quest for the being who might answer it, and that this search for the sacred endows the world with a soul. Evolution cannot explain our conception of the sacred; neuroscience is irrelevant to our interpersonal relationships, which provide a model for our posture toward God; and scientific understanding has nothing to say about the experience of beauty, which provides a God’s-eye perspective on reality.
Ultimately, a world without the sacred would be a completely different world - one in which we humans are not truly at home. Yet despite the shrinking place for the sacred in today’s world, Scruton says, the paths to transcendence remain open.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Mr. Simon Hunt
- 05-03-23
Beautiful analytic account of cognitive dualism
Weak integration of the implications of mathematical physics, but a vigorous Mozartian argument for the Lebenswelt as our primary ontological reality - accepting which, the face of God is everywhere and easily seen so.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
- Chris Casey
- 23-06-20
quite a lot of gobbldigook
This is a good issue to tackle and an arena of thought into which more should step. sadly I don't think on this occasion Mr Scruton managed to argue his case clearly or cohesively - but that is certainly not due to any lack on his part, I suspect it's due to his ambivalence about Christianity. had he sorted that out with conviction one way or the other the book would have felt different.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- RichardDM
- 19-07-20
Sublime Philosophical Commrntary
This was my first Scruton book and it was magnificent. Don’t lose concentration for one second or you’ll end up in a metaphorical thicket of intellectual terror - it is exhilarating to read a guy who’s mastered his stuff and presented so methodically robust. Great book.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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- LMC
- 31-08-23
Great book with poor narration
The Soul of the World is profoundly thought-provoking and always engaging. Scruton examines music, art, religion and the interpersonal relationships that define our humanity. Sadly the book is let down by poor narration, where words are mistaken or misplaced and sentence structures are mangled. Despite this, it is still very much worth your time.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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- issy
- 26-01-23
Disappointing
Probably just my loss, but I gave up after chapter one. Was so bamboozled by the language and was none the wiser even after concentrating. I’m usually a big fan, but this is not his best.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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- Neil Curry
- 26-10-22
that voice
The flat monotone. He seems to have no interest in what he is reading so hardly engages us.
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1 person found this helpful