Sekulært, helligt, universitet - et arbejdsnotat

Jeg er i øjeblikket ved (bl.m.a.) at læse en bog af den amerikanske (religions)sociolog Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution (2011). Det sker i et forsøg på at skitsere muligheden af en kobling mellem det sekulære og det hellige, slagordsagtigt mellem menneskerettigheder og religion. Naturligvis for at afmontere, neddæmpe de stadigt flere konflikter vi ser mellem religion og politik, men også indbyrdes mellem forskellige trossystemer.

I bogens første kapitel prøver Bellah at bestemme, hvad religion er. I den sammenhæng bruger han nogle begreber hentet hos psykologen Abraham Maslow.

Most of the time in daily life we are operating with a narrowly pragmatic consciousness, with what Maslow calls D-cognition *), and we don´t see symbols, or at least we don´t consciously see them. At times, however, even in the midst of daily life, we may experience a B-cognition **) when something ordinary becomes extraordinary, becomes symbolic.
*) D-cognition is motivated by a fundamental anxiety that propels us toward practical and pragmatic action in the world of working
**) When we are propelled by B-motives, we relate to the world by participation, not manipulation; we experience a union of subject and object, a wholeness that overcomes all partiality.

Det turde være indlysende, at der her ligger en angrebsvinkel, som bør undersøges. Hvis det kunne lykkes at inspirere til en form for kognition, bestående af en slags sammensmeltning, eller gensidig udvidelse, baseret på disse to kognitionsformer, så er det måske her man kan finde en mulig kobling mellem sekulært og helligt. Eller mellem fornuft og følelse, f.eks.

På finurlig vis får Bellah via Maslow koblet disse overvejelser til en universitetskritik, som i sig selv er værd at citere. Men som også antyder en opfattelse af det hellige, løsrevet fra religion.

Abraham Maslow once in my presence told of such a B-cognition. He was serving as a chair of the Department of Psychology at Brandeis and was expected to attend the graduation ceremony in full academic regalia. He had avoided such events previously, considering them silly rituals. But, he said, as the procession began to move he suddenly »saw« it as an endless procession. Far, far, ahead, at the very beginning of the procession was Socrates. Quite a way back but still well ahead of Maslow was Spinoza. Then just ahead of him was Freud followed by his own teachers and himself. Behind him stretching endlessly were his students and his students students, generation after generation as yet unborn. Maslow assured us that what he experienced was not a hallucination: rather it was a particular kind of insight, an example of B-cognition. It was also, I would suggest, the apprehension of the academic procession as a symbol, standing for the true university as a sacred community of learning, transcending time and space. He was in a sense apprehending the »real« basis of any actual university. One could say that if we can no longer glimpse that sacred foundation, the actual university would collapse. For the real university is neither a wholesale outlet for the consumer society nor an instrument in the class struggle, though the actual university is a bit of both. But if the university does not have a fundamental symbolic reference point that transcends the pragmatic considerations of the world of working and is in tension with those considerations, then it has lost its raison d´être.

Her taler Bellah om universitetet som et sacred community of learning med en sacred foundation, uden at der på nogen måde relateres til nogen religiøs tilknytning. (At de fleste tidlige universiteter havde en sådan, synes ikke at ligge til grund her - det er vist forsvarligt at antage, at Bellah taler om universitetet i det sekulære samfund).