Jean-Pierre Dupuy, prophet of what he calls "enlightened doomsaying," has long w
arned that modern society is on a path to self-destruction. In this book, he ple
ads 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 sa
cred 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 M
ax Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Marcel Mauss and in dialogue with the work of Rene
Girard, Dupuy shows that we must remember the world's sacredness in order to ke
ep 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 rel
igion bashers, secularists, and fundamentalists at once. Written by one of the d
eepest and most versatile thinkers of our time, it militates for a world where r
eason is no longer an enemy of faith."
