Marcus Tanner reviewed the book in The Independent: The Soul of the World was first published by Princeton University Press in 1994. Scruton discusses the meaning of the sacred, evaluating and criticizing theories such as those of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, as put forward in works such as Totem and Taboo (1913), and the anthropologist René Girard, as put forward in works such as Violence and the Sacred (1972). Scruton supports the concept of "cognitive dualism", which means that a human can be explained both as a physical organism, and as a subjective person who relates to the world through concepts which do not belong in physical sciences, and without which it would not be possible to understand human life. The author argues for the reality of a transcendent dimension, and maintains that the experience of the sacred plays a decisive role even in a secular society.
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