Vinoy
Paikkattu
St.
Charles Seminary, Nagpur.
Paper Title: “Dismantling the Human Construct of Dichotomy between Secular and Sacred-
A Wittgenstenian Way”
Abstract
Both human attraction toward sacred and secular, and the consequent tension between the two in daily life, are because people do not see their inter-relationship in depth. The interrelationship of the two can be upheld when the tension is dissolved. Wittgenstein once said, “Grasping the difficulty in its depth is what is hard. For if you interpret it in a shallow way the difficulty just remains. It has to be pulled out by the root; and that means, you have to start thinking about these things in a new way”(CV, 55). The assumed tension between the sacred and secular is like surging of waves at the surface of the ocean where it looks formidable and scary but in fact it is calm and serene at the deepest bottom. A new way of looking at the problem would help us see the problem dissolving.Wittgenstein has declared his allegiance to his faith neither in the sacred nor in the secular, rather he approached them with keen interest. While showing respect to the religious beliefs he never believed in, and while repudiating scientism he saw the world anew in the form of life. He had the sense of the sacred not the system of the sacred. He lived in the world as if it is the only precious life to live. He sought the meaning of life in the world which he called God; “The meaning of life, the meaning of the world, we can call God” (NB, pg. 73). The paper is an attempt to understand the question of sacred and secular in a deeper and new way, neither to exclude one over the other nor to endorse a compromise between the two, but to see the meaning of both from the point of view of human person who discovers the meaning in them, so that life becomes a ‘lived life in the world’ (NB, pg. 73) in its depth. Dissolving the tension by discovering the sense of the sacred and secular would be an antidote to the otherwise incompatible attitudes of the secular and religious world in the present world.Fr. Vinoy Paikkattu is a Catholic Priest Belonging to the Order of Preachers (Dominican). He is also a Visiting Faculty (Lecturer) in St. Charles Seminary, Nagpur; Gyan Dhara, Goa; D.V.K, Bangalore. He is currently pursuing his Doctoral Research in Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore.