The Mark of the Sacred
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, prophet of what he calls "enlightened doomsaying," has long warned that modern society is on a path to self-destruction. In this book, he pleads for a subversion of this crisis from within, arguing that it is our lopsided view of religion and reason that has set us on this course. In denial of our sacred origins and hubristically convinced of the powers of human reason, we cease to know our own limits: our disenchanted world leaves us defenseless against a headlong rush into the abyss of global warming, nuclear holocaust, and the other catastrophes that loom on our horizon. Reviving the religious anthropology of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Marcel Mauss and in dialogue with the work of René Girard, Dupuy shows that we must remember the world's sacredness in order to keep human violence in check. A metaphysical and theological detective, he tracks the sacred in the very fields where human reason considers itself most free from everything it judges irrational: science, technology, economics, political and strategic thought. In making such claims, The Mark of the Sacred takes on religion bashers, secularists, and fundamentalists at once. Written by one of the deepest and most versatile thinkers of our time, it militates for a world where reason is no longer an enemy of faith.
—Slavoj Žižek
"This book explores the relation between violence and religion, but not to endorse the common opinion that we can escape the first by abandoning the second. On the contrary, Dupuy argues that there is a dimension of religion and of the sacred which is inescapable even in a secular age. He challenges us to question the complacency of our received wisdom and forces us to reexamine some of our most cherished self-images of modern liberal democratic societies."
—Charles Taylor
"I'd recommend that all Californians—as citizens of a global hub for apocalyptic and utopian thinking—read [this] most accessible book."
—Joe Mathews, LA Daily News